Running the Wrong Way Round the Metaverse
by Sukamysia
Summary: This is a fan fiction of the show Masters of the Metaverse from ZOE. Justina dug a little too deep into the Programs business while looking for clues as to where her husband disappeared to. Xanaria was forced out of her home. Lonely Skipper finds them and takes them into the Metaverse. Who knows what they'll find?
1. In Which Justina Learns a Little Too Muc

**In Which Justina Learns a Little Too Much and is Forced to Flee**

* * *

Author's Note:

Since I couldn't find Masters of the Metaverse when trying to label the show this is for I'm saying it here. This is a fanfiction of Masters of the Metaverse, a Zombie Orpheus Entertainment show that broadcasts live every Monday from their twitch channel.  
It also includes memories of Pax's brilliant Masters of the Metaverse stories. "Need to Know" mostly but also "One more chance" and "Affairs Of The Heart And The Metaverse"

This isn't cannon.

* * *

"The library will be closing in 30 minutes."

Justina lifted her head from her hands. Another day of searching and she still hadn't found anything substantial. It had been five weeks since her concern for her husband and got her banned from the high school where he used to teach. Five weeks since a mysterious woman had confronted Justina and told her that Tom was dead. Five weeks since they had threatened her. Since she had disbelieved them. Five weeks since her concern had changed into a full-blown panic. Four weeks since they had followed through, gotten her fired, frozen her assets, gotten her mother removed from the PTA and almost arrested. Justina and her sister had gotten their mother into a retirement facility to keep her out of jail. A retirement facility she no longer could help pay for.

All of this had steeled her resolve, whatever they were hiding it was bad and she wouldn't leave Tom in the middle of that. Thomas. He had always hated the nickname Tom as much as she had always hated Tina, and yet that's what they called each other. She didn't exactly regret leaving him. They had gotten to the point where something had to give. But she couldn't accept that moment as how things really ended.

She carefully closed her notebook and pulled the smudged orange rubber band around it. She tucked it carefully in her bag next to the notebook with what information she had been able to find out about Tom and his new employers. She had stopped using digital means to keep her notes weeks ago, it might seem paranoid but she wasn't sure it was possible to be too careful anymore.

Not that there was much in there. It was like Tom had disappeared down a rabbit hole in the school's basement and there was nothing left to go on. When she had started searching she had tried to find out who the woman in grey had worked for. Then she'd tried to figure out if the woman in grey even existed. She'd kept calling the school, Tom's old co-workers, hell she had even tried reaching out to Nick Kreiger although they hadn't spoken since the day after she left Tom. He hadn't answered and she hadn't expected him too.

It hadn't taken her long to realize that just trying to find out information anyone could see wouldn't be good enough, so she started researching less easy ways of getting access to the information she needed. That went in a second, much more filled, notebook. The next step, of course, would be figuring out how to actually apply one to the other. She sighed again and rubbed her eyes. There were, she glanced at the clock, 26 more minutes until the library closed and only three minutes left on her computer session. The libraries system stopped letting you extend your time if it would mean being logged in after the library was closed.

She was tired, down to her bones, but she felt close to something. Maybe something that would make a difference. She watched the last couple minutes countdown in the corner of the screen.

It hit zero, the screen switched over to the library's logo and the login page. She put on her coat, looked around the workstation to make sure she had everything gathered into her bag, and headed out. As she passed the front desk she smiled and nodded to Maria, the librarian working there. Maria waved back as she passed. Justina pulled out her keys before she walked out the front door, but there was no one waiting for her today. She unlocked her bike, twisted the handlebars back into alignment with the front tire, and rode home.

* * *

The next morning Justina was back at the library. She locked up her bike, and then looked toward the still closed doors twisting her wedding ring around on her finger. Noticing the motion, she carefully removed the ring and tucked it into a small inner pocket on her coat, which she then zipped closed. She had a habit of spinning her ring around whenever she thought of Tom which had resulted in a nasty blister on her ring finger, so keeping the ring safe in her pocket had become a bit of a ritual to her.

When Diane, the librarian who worked morning shifts four days a week, opened the door Justina nodded to her.

Diane smiled back asking, "Found what you're looking for yet, Tina?"

"Not yet, Diane, but getting close, I think."

"Oh yeah? I hope it's worth it."

"Me too."

Justina slipped through the door and walked directly to her favorite computer. She dropped her coat over the back of the chair, sat down, placed the notebooks from her bag to the right of the keyboard where she could take notes easily, and put her bag by her feet. Every motion was precise and practiced after a few weeks of daily research. She settled into her routine. Flipping her notebook open, she began researching what a "piggyback" was when used to talk about computers.

A couple hours passed, a couple pages filled. The day promised to go much the same as yesterday, the day before, and the day before that.

Until Justina felt a brush against her thoughts, something inside her mind. It was not unpleasant. It felt almost like someone she didn't know, but had always known, had walked into her home and started making tea. The feeling grew as a presence made itself comfortable inside her body, her soul, her mind. A presence that felt like grace and speed and the constant edge of wariness. Of a prey animal prepared to run. But overwhelmingly, with the feeling of excitement. She was giddy and confused, out of her depth and fully prepared to wade in deeper. The presence pushed Justina out of the way, and inside her own mind she protested.

_Hey!_

_~Sorry, sorry!~_

And it eased up a bit.

_~What is this?~ _Her own hands caressed the edges of the computer screen in front of her.

_It's a computer. Seriously, stop it. You're making me look weird._

The presence eased up a little more, and Justina returned her hands to the keyboard.

_~A computer?~ _There was a moment of confusion, and then it was like the presence remembered but with Justina's memories. The giddiness rose again.

_~This Metaverse has _electricity!

_Metaverse? _Justina was confused by the term.

~_Honestly, I'm not really sure.~_

There was a brief memory of a cheerful furry fluff-ball with big ears and big eyes hanging upside down from a vine by their tail. They were happily telling her, "- what _you _are, my little pilot! You're a Metaverse traveler yourself now!"

"I'm... I'm... A hero?"

The fluff ball cock their head, setting them swinging. "You're a pilot. One all full of non-sequiturs it seems. I like that! Your heroic-ocity is all up to you."

"Oh."

"You wanna try exploring?!" They swung and hopped between vines until they dropped down behind a short pillar of glossy black stone with strange swirling patterns etched across it. They poked their head out from behind it, eyes glittering impossibly. "The Metastone can take you somewhere close! And you can come back with stories, right?"

Justina recognized that it hadn't been her memory, concluded that it was one from the presence in her mind, considered doubting it but dismissed the impulse because she could tell it had been real. The same way she could tell her own memories were real.

_Do you… What's your name?_

_~Oh! How rude. I'm sorry, I just got so excited. I'm Xanaria.~ _A resigned feeling creeped into her thoughts. ~_Please don't call me Ri_.~

Justina felt a connection, a first thread of kinship. _I'm Justina, please don't call me Tina._

_~I promise I never will.~_

Justina smiled, and she wasn't sure which of them had been the one to do so.

_~Now, show me this computer please!~_

_Well, it holds and stores information and this one is connected to a bunch of other computers that also store information. So you can ask it things and it might know the answer._

_~Oooh! Ask it what a Metaverse is!~_

_Ah, _Justina was brought back to earth. _Why don't you ask your fuzzy friend, I'm working on something right now._

_~What were you doing with it?~_

_Well, someone I care about is in trouble and I've been trying to figure out where he disappeared to._

_~Oh, and the computer can scry him for you?~_

_No. Well, maybe sort of. It might show me his trail if I can ask right. I've been researching how to exploit loopholes and bypass security to find out where he went after he left the high school where he taught. That was the last place I know he was._

_~Why haven't you asked it yet? You've been here for weeks.~_

_I have asked, just apparently not in the right way. I've been researching how to make it... _Justina struggled to make what she'd been doing fit the metaphor that seemed to be working for Xanaria, _make it… umm…_

_~You aren't threatening it are you?~_

_No! That's not really… It can't actually think. I'm trying to figure out ways to… get it to tell me things other people have told it not to tell me. It's like... it's a library and I'm trying to find an open window into a section that is normally only for a select few people._

_~Why don't you show me.~_

_What! I'm not ready yet, I'm barely starting to understand this stuff._

Xanaria picked up her open notebook. ~_Why not? You obviously were able to write about it.~_

Justina closed the notebook. _I was just copying things down, taking notes you know._

Xanaria opened it again at random. _~What does this bit mean? What's a "command line"?~_

_It's a thing computer programmers use to do all sorts of stuff. I don't really understand it, and I can't access it on the library computers. Not as far as I can tell, anyway. But someone said, _Justina flipped to the page were she had written the quote down, _A graphical user interface makes the easy things easier, but a command line make the difficult things possible._

She hadn't written it word for word. She'd been trying to use her own words for most of the notes she'd taken. It was an old college trick that had seen her well through the years.

_~What about this bit here?~ _Xanaria flipped to a page later in the notebook.

_That's about how to skip past a password protected page, but it only works if the system is at least 5 updates behind the latest patch._

_~Well, let's try that.~_

_But what if it doesn't work?_

_~Then you can come back and try something else. I asked you what two random things meant and you were able to give me an answer for both of them to some degree. Now show me what you've learned and lets save your husband!~_

Justina didn't ask how Xanaria knew who she was looking for. She had probably remembered in that weird shared way they currently had when Justina was thinking about him.

_Okay fine. It can't hurt I suppose. _

Justina realized she was nervous. She was about to find out if she had just been wasting her time. _How long have I just been putting this off?_

Justina thumbed through the notebook, more for comfort than anything. She had gone over the notebook every night after the library closed trying to understand it better. She could have found the right page in the dark. The one where she had started spitballing how to apply her new theoretical knowledge to the real world problem she had.

_This is my first idea. _

And she set about manipulating the high schools web page, trying to get beyond it and into their personnel files. A few failed attempts later and she was getting discouraged.

_I should really come back later once I've learned more about all this stuff._

_~Oh, come on! This is cool! Keep going, I'm sure you'll find something. Besides you keep taking notes about how you failed, surely that will help you find the right way.~_

It was hard to back down in the face of such enthusiasm and after a few more failures Justina finally hit the jackpot.

The high school's athletics program was trying to get more people interested in their teams by posting a webpage that had tabs for each sport, and profiles for all the players. It showed school pictures, their best times, high scores, and brief quotes from each. But more importantly, to Justina anyway, in order to show they care about academics each student profile showed their grade in the class they were most successful in. To do that, the website called that information straight from the student files to automatically update day to day. The software had been slapped on after the main website had been finished and Justina was able to follow it back to the student files. And from there she could access the classes they were in, and who their teachers were.

And they hadn't yet removed the teacher file for one Thomas Wells.

There it was, a shiny new lead. There was a memo there clearly from before he had left entirely, requesting his final class of the day get taken over by someone else so that he could pick up an extra job tutoring children for an organization called The Exploration and Informational Program.

_~You did it! Now you should look up Metaverse, you got me curious.~_

_Ask your fluffy friend. I finally have a lead, but not an answer. It's time to keep looking. _Justina smiled then. _And thank you. For pushing me to try the next step. I'd grown so tired of failure._

And she searched. She found no more on The Exploration and Information Program than she had found on The International Felonies Program at the start of all this. She went back to the school files, and found a letter of recommendation Principal Jerry had supposedly written. It reads like an example from an online tutorial. It was lukewarm and vague and for a moment she felt angry at Jerry for his half assed attempt, before she remembered that it had worked well enough to get Tom the new job. And that Tom getting the job was the real problem. But the letter was directed to The Program Manager. No name even. Just the title.

"God, Jerry's a lazy ass-hole." Justina muttered.

She heard some titters to her right. Startled she glanced over and saw that the space next to her had been taken up by two kids, maybe 12 years old. She been too absorbed to even notice them arrive. They were crowded together, one in front and the other almost perched on his shoulder. She couldn't see what they were playing without leaning over.

"Uh, sorry." She said.

They glanced at each other and giggled again, ignoring her. A little embarrassed she returned to her work. She searched "The Program Manager," before thinking it through. Of course it came up with nothing. Or rather pages and pages of irrelevant results.

She kept looking, and she kept hitting dead ends. Websites that had disappeared, broken links, weird unrelated search results that yielded nothing more than a strong desire for brain bleach. But it was odd, clearly the place had existed enough for Jerry to write them a recommendation letter and for Tom to apply to. And when she searched, she should have at least found some false leads. But she didn't. And that alone was enough to make her feel like if she could just learn some more about how to look behind the surface, she would really be onto something.

"The library will be closing in 30 minutes."

~W_ell, at least you got some more notes for your notebook. Maybe you'll find something more tomorrow.~_

_Yeah, I hope so. _Justina stretched her arms and cracked her neck, then she tucked her notebooks away for the day. _What was it you wanted me to look up? We only have about 15 more minutes left on the computer. It couldn't hurt to look._

_~Oooh! Yes, see if you can find out what a Metaverse is. I mean, besides this being a Metaverse.~_

_Yeah, okay. _Justina typed in the word. The search results scrolled down, something about the future of the internet, and permanent linked 3D virtual spaces.

Then the screen went black and the lights all went dark.

Justina froze startled. _Wha-_

~_Oh shit oh shit oh shit! Run!_~

As a confused babble rose around her from the other library patrons and staff, Justina pushed back from her computer so fast the chair spun away and hit the corner of a bookshelf were it fell over. It lay on there, one wheel spinning wildly.

She grabbed her bag, slinging it haphazardly across her back. She dashed down the row of computers and whipped around the corner toward the main doors.

But she skidded to a stop when they came into view. There was a teenager rattling frantically at the wide glass doors.

_Maybe I could break through them?_

But then she saw a sleek black SUV pulling up, all tinted windows and shiny paint. A thousand movies worth of menace radiated from it's every movement.

~_Other way! OTHER WAY!_~

Justina wirled and dove back into the library.

Maria watched her arrive and watched her go, shocked. Then she looked out the doors to see the car come to a stop outside the building. Her eyes widened and her mouth formed a voiceless, "Oh."

Justina and Xanaria ran past the water fountains and the hallway that led to the bathrooms. Justina would have continued running straight, but Xanaria knew a little more about being hunted.

~_Turn! We have to try and lose them, don't get cornered!~ _

They took a right into sci-fi. Behind them they heard the sound of glass breaking, and Maria's familiar voice started to shout "Hey! You can't-" but then yelped and was silent.

_Oh, God. Do you think she's okay?_

_~No time!~_

Justina took a hard left, darting across an aisle and into the heart of History. The shelves here were older, and sturdier, but taller too. She wished had taken more time to actually explore the library in the last month she had been frequenting the place. When she ran out the other side of History, Xanaria guided her toward Juvenile Fiction and away from the deeper recesses of the Dewey Decimal system. There wasn't time to explain why, but somehow Justina knew that it was because Xanaria recognized the light as having a more natural quality. Hopefully that meant there would be a window in an outside wall and therefore maybe an exit.

In the same way, Justina knew that they had four pursuers. Two with heavy footsteps in solid boots, each step a command and perfectly in sync. One that moved in spurts with a dancers grace, her feet tapping out patterns as she moved ever forward. And one who was almost silent, moving carefully and steady. This last was a hunter's footsteps, and it made Xanaria want to scream.

Juvenile fiction was shaped, not in rows like most of the library, but in three layers of cornered sections surrounding an open corner of the building filled with soft low chairs and benches as well as a ridiculous number of well worn brightly colored stuffed toys. One wall contained the promised windows, but instead of one big window there were lots of little ones with thick wood framing between each little panel. No way out there. The other wall had a door in it. Not the emergency exit they had hoped for, but one labeled with an "employees only" sign and with the symbol for stairs underneath the words.

_~This is not a way out!~_

_Should we go back?_

_~No, Sleeping Goddess, no! They're too close!~_

Panic spiking once more, Justina ran to the door. It was unlocked. Her momentary relief was dulled when she found herself in a narrow hallway with no windows. On the far wall were two doors. Past the doors was a narrow stairway that continued straight from the hallway and rose up out of sight. The first door turned out to be a broom cupboard with only a tiny window high up in the far wall. The second was locked.

_I guess that leaves the stairs. _She thought grimly.

_~Hurry!~ _Xanaria begged.

With no better options left, they sprinted up the stairs. At the top was another doorway, it had no handle, just a plate to push on. Just as she was reaching it she heard the door from the main library open. It would almost have been better if it had been flung open but instead it opened almost casually. None of the footsteps were bothering to hurry now. Justina pushed on the door. It opened easily and she hurried through it, but not before she heard the sound of a pleased high pitched giggle from behind her.

Beyond the door at the top of the stairs, they found themselves facing a big room full of tall shelves. They were made of plain silver metal and stuffed full of cardboard boxes. Justina didn't pause to look at the printer paper signs on the end of each shelf. She just ran, that giggle still echoing in her head.

~_Sleeping Goddess, don't stick to a straight line! Zig zag! Take a sideways path now and then, anything! This room only gives cover in one direction! We have to get beyond it!~_

So she ran as randomly as she could without backtracking. She ran between tall metal shelves that all began to look the same. She ran past a little nook with some cushion chairs around a low table and an old refrigerator against one wall. She followed the wall for a while looking for a break in the shelves so she could dive back in, but the next break came when she reached a corner of the room. She blinked and paused gasping raggedly for breath. She had gotten all turned around and she wasn't sure which wall it was she was facing. There were a couple pieces of paper taped to the wall here. Makeshift signs you would never find in a section of the library frequented by the public.

One pointed back the way she came and it said "Bathrooms." The other pointed sideways and said "Restorations."

~_Bathroom? It would be messy but we could climb down the hole escape the building!~_

_That won't work here, our bathrooms are designed differently. No escape. Restorations sounds like a big room, maybe they'll have a fire escape there!_

That was when they heard the door open and a calm voice ordered, "Spread out."

_~Okay, go! Go!~_

They ran in the direction of the arrow. Xanaria heard the two sets of heavy footsteps, still in perfect sync, turn in opposite directions as they headed out around the edges of the room. The light erratic ones changed tone, they were joined by the clink of metal and a slight groaning as the shelves shifted.

~_They're climbing, Sleeping Goddess, they'll be able to see everything from up there! And the hunter! Where's the hunter! I can't hear them anymore!~_

_Calm down. Just listen. Breath and listen. You know how._

Together they tried to run as quietly as they could without compromising speed. Justina tried to keep from gasping. After a moment they heard the fourth set of footsteps; whisper soft, dangerous, and coming down the middle of the room.

They found the door suddenly. It looked impossibly ordinary on such a terrifying day. The sign on it hung askew because the scotch tape on one corner had come loose, but it was easy enough to read. It said "RESTORATIONS."

Justina yanked the door open, dived through, and slammed it shut behind her. She looked in vain for a lock, then cast about for a moment for something to block it with. Then she remembered that it opened away from her. Abandoning that idea, Justina spun around and started forward scanning the room for the next step.

The room was full of work tables, many of which had books and materials scattered across them. But it was empty of people.

_They must have gone home already._

_~How is that important, right now?!~_

_I'm moving, aren't I? Just noticing._

On the far side of the room were three large glass windows. Hoping the building was up to fire safety codes and somewhere out there was a fire escape, Justina zigzagged between desks and stack of boxes.

Justina had only made it halfway to the windows when she heard the door slam open behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw two large men. One she recognized from the day outside the high school. Large, stoic, and menacing, his air of "bodyguard" was replaced with one of "hired goon" when he wasn't standing behind the angular woman in grey. The other could easily have been his brother. They were the owners of the heavy matching foot steps then.

Darting between them was a skinny young woman in a flowing white dress. Her eyes were shut tight and she wore a cheerful smile, like they were all just playing a fun game. A game she knew she was winning. The girl skipped sideways and hopped up on one of the tables without once opening her eyes. Hers must be the light and erratic steps.

That was all Justina saw in a moment, and quick as her glance had been it still earned her a barked hip on the corner of a table.

Justina gritted her teeth and kept moving toward the window. Xanaria heard the last of their pursuers enter the room. The hunter. Instincts screaming, Xanaria took control and threw them sideways and down. She was just in time. A crossbow bolt whistled past, right were they had been, and shattered the middle window. Justina felt something snap in her bag and hoped vaguely it had just been a pencil.

Heart hammering, Xanaria scrambled behind a sturdy work table and clung there shivering. Justina pulled back some control, and peeked out around the corner.

She saw the young woman first, eyes still closed, hopping from table to table, circling around to get between Justina and the windows. In a pleased sing song tone the young woman called out, "Time to give up now, this doesn't have to hurt. In fact, you could live a little longer if you come willingly and answer some questions."

But Xanaria's attention, and therefore Justina's as well, were locked on their final pursuer. They were short, and wide shouldered, their face hidden from the nose down behind a brownish grey scarf, and a wide forest green hood and half cloak covering the rest of their head and chest. They were barefoot, and already had another quarrel loaded into the crossbow which was aimed pointedly downward. To Justina they looked like something off the cover of a pulp fantasy novel. To Xanaria their every movement spoke of a hunter unchallenged in far too long.

"Come on now." Eyes _still _closed, Young and Creepy seemed to have decided to be the talker for the group. "You managed to find out far more than you should have been able to. We just want to know how you did it."

"And you'll let me go if I tell you?" Justina tried to buy time, she knew not to trust the girl even if she agreed.

_How do we get out of this?_

_~I don't know! Sleeping Goddess, we've been _cornered!~

"Well, maybe. But first we would have to make sure you don't remember anything, and is that really better than a quick painless end?"

Justina didn't know what she had expected them to say but it hadn't been that.

"It could be easy you know. If you keep hiding and running, Robin might miss," There was a quiet snort from the other side of the room that Young and Creepy pointedly ignored, "and then it would all be a lot more messy and painful and none of us want that."

"Jesus." Justina muttered. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Okay, well, this is your last chance. And let me be perfectly clear. We are curious about how you learned what you learned, but the most important thing is that you stop knowing it. So what do you choose?"

Justina was speechless, the blood draining from her face.

"Okay then. Robin?"

There was a click behind her. While they had been talking the hunter had moved unnoticed. Justina turned her head to see the crossbow come up. Xanaria was screaming inside her mind. She tried to move out of the way, knowing there was no time, her only thought that she had to get away. She lunged sideways, but also somehow inward and diagonal and upside down. She felt Xanaria ripped out of her body as the world exploded into waves of blinding white and pain. More pain than she had ever felt. She felt herself falling and falling and falling. Finally, thankfully, she passed out.


	2. In Which Justina is Lost in Her Own Mind

**In Which Justina is Lost in Her Own Mind**

* * *

She floated briefly in a dark void, cool and quiet, but she could still feel the pain trying to creep in at the edges. She tried to think. Tried to figure out where she was, but her mind was sluggish. _How did I get here?_ This wasn't possible, none of it. When she started things had been absurd and improbable, but not this level of insane.

_I got threatened, that's been where things began to slip sideways into the bizarre_.

A thin woman in a gray business suit stood in the high school parking lot, her body guard looming behind her.

"Unfortunately I regret to inform you that Mr. Wells is no longer with us."

Justina had been confused, still trying to reach the next step in the chain to find him.

"Your husband is dead."

Justina was shocked, horrified, and even more confused.

"A computer malfunctioned. He was killed in the explosion and resulting fire."

Justina hadn't believed her, couldn't believe her.

"I hear you're very good at walking, especially when you're leaving."

Justina got angry and that was when the woman began to threaten her. The thin woman seemed to grow even taller and sharper as she calmly and reasonably told Justina exactly what would happen to her if she didn't leave this mystery alone. _She proved she knew all sorts of facts about me, but absolutely nothing about who I am_. _As soon as I got home I started pushing back_.

Justina turned around in her dream and sat curled up on her couch, calling everyone she knew who Tom might go to if he was in trouble. The list wasn't long. _At least as failed tries go it was short. By the next day I had moved on to asking everyone I knew if they had any clues about his whereabouts. _No matter how embarrassing the conversations got she kept trying. Everyday after work she would start again. She wrote lists of people she hadn't asked yet when she was on her lunch break.

_Oh god, that was a tedious stretch of time. The next real thing happened... a week after meeting the woman in gray? A long week, but yes, it was just about a week._ Justina went into work as usual and was met with shocked stares and a brief summons to her bosses office.

"Ah, Mrs. Wells, ah… I'm sorry to inform you that some information from your, uh, past has, um… come to light. And well, we wont be needing you anymore."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Well, ah, Ms Jones, from the International Felonies Program stopped by and she told us about some of the, um, well, the truly despicable things you did in Prague and, well, we just can't condone that kind of behavior in an employee. I'm sorry." He kept tugging at his tie and glancing over her shoulder at the open door.

"What exactly am I supposed to have done?"

"Now, no need to get worked up. Um, it's just that, you understand, we can't really keep you here. We are a bank. Even if you can't be tried in this country we can't, um, well… People trust us to take care of their money and I, ah, I need to live up to that trust."

Justina gaped at him. He smiled sickly back at her, tugging at his tie. Her mind was blank. She was sure there was something she should be saying, but all that came out was, "Wha… wh… wha…"

"Mrs. Wells, could you-"

"Are you firing me?"

"Well, um, yes."

"Because some woman told you a tall tale about me?"

"Ms. Jones is a highly decorated government agent and she had plenty of compelling evidence and, well, to be perfectly frank I am horrified that you were aloud to return to this country at all."

"But I've never been to- where did you say? Prague?"

"Please, Mrs. Wells. We are way past this."

"Oh, come on!"

His eyes widened and he scooted back in his chair. "I think it's time you left now, Mrs. Wells."

"No, this is ridiculous. I haven't done anything!"

He gestured at someone behind her frantically. "I, ah, I think it's time you left now Mrs. Wells." He repeated.

"But I haven't-"

A hand grabbed her arm firmly. She looked up. Then up some more. The hand's owner was an extremely large and unfamiliar security guard, and Justina hadn't even heard him come in.

There was a quiet moment. The man, clearly a professional, let her process the situation. Justina stood. She didn't really have a choice.

She glared at her boss. "I want my last paycheck."

He waved his hands vaguely, "It's, um, in the mail."

As she was escorted from the building she heard someone mutter, "Puppies? Really? That's horrible!" But when she looked around she couldn't tell who it had been.

_The paycheck never was in the mail though, was it? I didn't think it was. Bastard._

Out the door of the bank and into her own apartment Justina, frustrated and at loose ends, made the most of the only research tactic she had yet to figure out. The google search.

With new information and old she searched Google with every possible combination she could think of. She hit a half-dozen page not found errors.

After a frustrating few minutes she discovered that if she didn't try to open the page and just read the text under the page name she could see something. Apparently International Felonies Program - Main Included the words:

"An important Program with highly trained agents keeping our country safe from dangerous felons who may walk among us. We do our best to find Grifters, Thieves, Murderers, and other unwanted scoundrels who cannot be caught by the regular..."

And International Felonies Program - Personnel did indeed include:

"...And other skills to keep you safe. Deborah **Jones**: Once a highly trained CIA operative, **Ms. Jones** left to join us, were she won't be hampered by technicalities and transparent ruses to keep her from protecting the American people from any threat she…"

Since she couldn't copy and paste without clicking through to a nonexistent page, Justina copied it all carefully by hand, something she was grateful for later, and then typed it all up in a carefully organized word document. She had gone to bed not long after midnight feeling hopeful, despite the terrible events of the day. She finally had something to work with, something beyond the echoing nothing she had been calling Tom's name into.

_Was that when my mother was almost arrested? No, that happened later, right? After I had found the eviction notice_ _on my door._

She had been leaving home to go grocery shopping when she had seen the sheet of legal paper pinned in the middle of her door telling her she only had six weeks before she had to get out. She had pulled it down and gone inside to read it. In short it said that the building had been bought by a developer. Everyone had to be out by that same deadline.

Justina vaguely knew that in real life she had marched down to the office joining several of her neighbors in an exhausting and profitless argument with a secretary who had less control over the situation than the buildings tenants. She hadn't been aloud to talk to anyone in charge. None of them had.

In her dream though, she set it down on the counter and just when to the store. She was still thinking about the eviction and where she could move into when the cashier said something.

"What?"

"I'm sorry, you card has been declined. Do you have another one we can try?"

"Oh, umm, yeah."

But this one got declined too.

She looked at her shallow reserve of cash and then at all of the items she had on they conveyor belt. "I'll put it back." She said, feeling a lump in her throat.

"I'm sorry." The cashier said, a little helplessly. "You don't need to worry about putting it back. I'll call someone to do it. I'm sorry."

Justina nodded and took the out, escaping before anything else could happen.

She sat in her car for a few minutes before driving to a different grocery store. She knew it was silly, but she did it anyway. In the parking lot she counted her cash. She had $47.38. She had more cash at home, but that was all she ever carried around with her at a time. _I'm not sure how long I have to make this last, I'll be careful._

She took her time, comparing prices per weight and sales. Eventually she got two cases of ramen and a flat of 1/2 off cream of mushroom soup. It came to just over $30. She hoped it would last a while. She wished it wouldn't have too.

Once home, Justina began calling around, trying to find a place she could move into. She had no luck. She didn't bother to follow up with the bank or any of her credit cards, she could recognize a pattern when she saw one. Instead she threw herself into her research for the rest of the evening and late into the night. She fell asleep exhausted and frustrated.

She had barely been asleep for two hours when she was jolted awake to her phone playing Cheshire Kitten, her sister's personal ringtone. It was three in the morning.

"Th' hell?" Justina mumbled. She considered just letting Alice leave a message and dealing with it in the morning. Justina hadn't even realized Alice knew 3 in the morning existed. She was more of an "up at the crack of noon" kind of person. Which, Justina's vaguely realized, must mean that it was important.

It took Justina two tries to answer the phone. One eye squinting, the other still closed she sighed and mumbled. "What's wrong, Alice?"

"Oh, god, Tina! It's about mom!"

Justina was suddenly wide awake. The pointy woman in grey's words echoed in her head: _I know about your mother and the PTA, and a little incident with a missing cash box that was never brought to the police because 'she's such a nice lady if just a bit forgetful.'_

In a much more serious voice she asked again, hoping she was wrong, "What's wrong Alice?"

"The police called the house! They're going to arrest mom!"

"That doesn't make sense they wouldn't call first if they were going to-"

"Justina this is serious!"

Justina had already pulled her coat on over pajamas, "I know, I'm on my way."

Justina had driven straight over there, not even bothering to put on shoes. Her sleeping mind pulled away from the stressful two days that had followed. They had eventually gotten something worked out, her mother was in a nursing home now, and it was all on Alice to pay for it. Justina had been forced to explain about losing her job, and her frozen accounts. She had seen the moment when her sister had decided she was one of the bad guys. The look of disbelieving and disappointed shock on Alice's face would probably stay with Justina for the rest of her life.

Justina settled again in a moment a couple days later. She sat on her living room floor, eating ramen, and continuing her search for Tom, when her computer died and refused to turn back on. She struggled with it for almost an hour before giving up.

She glared at the now useless slab of plastic and wire and felt something give inside her chest. Packing a bag with the notebook she had used to copy down those first bits of information she'd found about the "International Felonies Program", she went to get in her car, but stopped. Both her back tires were slashed and empty. So she turned around and walked the mile and a half to the nearest library. Getting a card took 5 minutes. She made her way to an open computer, sat down and began again. She only had to relocate once, when someone reserved the computer she was at, but otherwise she was able to extend her session every time she approached the one hour limit.

"The library will be closing in 30 minutes." She had been startled that first day hearing a loud voice after so many hours of muted tones.

She flipped through the pages of her notebook, several pages, but not much on them. She sighed and tucked it away in her bag. She stretched her cramped legs, used the bathroom, and went to the front desk.

The young librarian there looked up with a cheerful smile.

"Yes?"

"What are the hours for the library?"

"We open at 9 in the morning and close at 8."

"Thank you."

Justina turned to go but the librarian asked, "You were working pretty hard on something there, did you get it figured out?"

Justina smiled back, a little sickly, "Not really. I might be at this for a while."

"Ah, yes." The librarian said with an innocent wisdom that made Justina's smile twist at the corners. "I understand, well we almost always have some computers open, but I'll save you a spot in the morning if you have a preference."

The unexpected kindness surprised her, "Thank you, if it's not too much trouble, I like the one on the end there."

The computer in question was out of the way and least likely to have people passing or standing behind her back while she searched.

"Yeah, that ones my favorite too." The librarian said cheerfully and she jotted a note on a well used pad of paper. "Can I get a name for this?"

"Yeah, it's Justina Wells."

"Okay, Tina Wells, I should be here in the morning but if I'm not up front here just tell them your name and they'll know you're the one the reserved sign is for."

"No, Justina."

"Okay, just Tina then."

Justina let it go. She had learned a long time ago to just let that one go.

"Thank you," Justina glanced at the librarians name tag, "Maria. I've… It's been... thank you." She was a little annoyed to feel the prickles of tears in the corners of her eyes.

"Of course, Tina. I hope you figure it all out."

Justina nodded, and knowing more words would just make the dampness in her eyes worse, she smiled and left the library. Even walking home in the dark couldn't extinguish the warm feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Although, arriving home to find that her hot water had been turned off did dim her spirits somewhat.

She sighed, _at least I still have running water, even if it's cold. _She sighed and filled the teapot so she could at least have a little warm water to wash in.

Just in case she also filled every pot and mixing bowl she had with water. It wasn't much, she had left everything at the house with Tom. She had expected to go back, she just wanted him to do something. Come after her, call her, actually talk to her, just something. It had seemed to her that he was always trying to fade away, but she never thought he would just up and disappear. Not without her anyway.

That last message he had left her, he had sounded intensely reasonable, the way he got when he was upset. _I think you were right. I think the separation is a good idea. _

She had been in Stratford-upon-Avon in a cute two story hotel with Shakespeare quotes framed in every other room. And the worst part was that she had been about to give up. It was wonderful, beautiful, everything she had ever wanted in a trip except… It had felt forced. It wasn't that she wanted Tom with her exactly, she could barely imagine him here, it just felt like she was running away and leaving all her problems half finished and dragging at her. She had packed to go back home, and was planning to look into moving her flight two weeks earlier.

She had run scenarios over and over in her head. How she would find him and what she would say. What he would say. Inviting him to join her. The way she would seem unconcerned but not dismissive. And finally, finally they would go on one of the trips they had talked about since high school. Or that she had talked about. She had come to notice over the years that Tom had never had much to say about them, except to make excuses for why he couldn't this time.

Waking up she had seen a missed call on her cell and a voice mail from an unfamiliar number. Expecting a scam call she made herself coffee before listening to the message. Her heart had leapt when she heard his voice, "I think you were right. I think the separation is a good idea." And sank when she heard his words.

She listened to the message again. Then deleted it. Then she unpacked. There was no way she was going back now. If she did, then everything would go back to how it had been. That endless monotony. And she could just imagine the smug grin he would get if she came back now on his terms.

She had walked across town and bought an expensive ticket for a play she couldn't remember the name of and sat for two hours watching highly trained and chosen actors say lines and move through a performance that got a standing ovation. And then she returned to her hotel room and stared at the ceiling trying to remember any of it. She had tried to pretend everything was wonderful and waited for him to apologize.

But he hadn't. And when she had broken down and finally called home no one answered. Again the next week. And the next. That was when she had begun to worry.

She'd eventually called the high school, the woman in the office told Justina that Tom wasn't there, that he had gotten another job, and when she tried to ask were he had gone all she got was non-answers. They assured her they would call her back as soon as they heard anything. But they hadn't and as her calls became more frequent, the answers she received became shorter and no more informational.

Eventually she had tried to go in person. That coward of a principle had tried to turn her away and that was when she met the sharp woman in the gray suit.

She had always hoped he would go off somewhere, she just wanted it to be because she finally got him out of the house. Out of the safety of his life. That was the problem really. It was like he had always thought that as long as he didn't try to do anything he could still potentially be great at it. So he never did anything at all in order to never fail. And now he finally had done something. He had left the school, disappeared, and something was very wrong. Her gut told her that.

If he had gotten into this mess because of her… Her mind shied away from the thought. No, it didn't make sense anyway. If she could inspire him to disappear into danger then she would have been able to inspire him to take a short trip anywhere but here.

The teapot whistled and she shook her head. She had to figure out how to get decently clean in a bowl of warm water.

_I got good at that eventually, and it wasn't long before I found my bike at a thrift store. _

It had cost twenty dollars from her emergency fund. It was a shitty bike, but she wouldn't have to walk alone in the dark. Riding to the library took less time than she expected, and she made it there safely despite the jerky rear brake, which she had not expected. She took a moment on a bench outside waiting for the library to open. She took a deep breath. Then another. And somehow she found herself crying. She wasn't proud of it but she thought for a moment about just giving up. Just for a moment though._ I could tell them they won. I could… but they wouldn't get mother's job back or my apartment back. And I still wouldn't know where he was._

She was saved from further spiraling when the library door was unlocked. And so began the pattern of the next few weeks. Up early, ride to the library before it opened, research what she could until it closed, go home cook something easy, premake food for the next day and look through her notes for any new clues. Sleep. Wake up, and repeat.

After a while she realized she had found everything she could by poking at the surface of the internet. If she wanted to find anything new she was going to have to change tactics and learn some less legal ways of viewing information. So she got a new notebook and started to research computers and internet weaknesses. She didn't have access to a lot of the tools she learned would make breaking into places she wasn't supposed to be able to see easier, and she couldn't download them onto a library computer, even if she knew she would always be at the same terminal. So she focused on what she could do anyway. Things that used the address bar, things that involved taking advantage of human predictability.

It was hard, she had to keep looking up terms she didn't recognize, and decipher instructions from people who expected you to already know a lot more than she did, and people who didn't seem to know how to use punctuation. But she finally felt like she was making progress and this notebook filled much more quickly.

Justina found herself becoming annoyed with things that had always been in the background. Her hair kept getting in her eyes when she was researching. She no longer felt like she had the time in the morning to do any of the things she used to do to manage it. One night she took a pair of scissors to it. She just kept cutting until it was entirely out of her way. She refused to look at it in the mirror until the next morning.

She tried to even it out a bit, and it wasn't the worst haircut she had ever had, but she eventually pulled a knit cap on before heading out. No one mentioned it and it didn't get in her eyes anymore so she soon forgot about it.

_Besides after that mugger right outside the library I had more important things to worry about._

It had been a day just like any other day. Justina left the library heading for her bike when a man suddenly appeared in the floodlight's glow. He knocked her down and grabbed for her bag. She clung to it and stabbed him in the shin with the pencil she hadn't put away yet. He yelled and kicked her and then limped quickly off because one of the few other people leaving the library started yelling that they were calling the police. Someone helped her to her feet.

"Hey, are you okay?"

She nodded, pulling away as soon as she had her balance.

"Do you need a ride somewhere? The hospital?"

"No thank you. I'm fine, just a little surprised."

He looked like he didn't believe her, but Justina didn't care. She hadn't let go of her bag and she was backing toward the bike rack. She wasn't going to trust someone just because he had helped her up, not when she knew that someone powerful wanted her to stop being a nuisance. She was a little afraid of how they might react if she actually learned anything real, but she didn't let that stop her from pushing. She hurt, she would have a nasty bruise later. She just wanted to go home and hide. Maybe plan for next time. She unlocked her bike with shaking hands and rode quickly back to her apartment. She hid under her blankets for a while like a kid until she stopped shaking.

It was hard, but she didn't let herself stop going. She carried her keys in between her fingers in a stabby manner every time she went outside now. Each day with out incident it was a little easier.

Days passed, then weeks and then Xanaria… _Ah, yes. That's where I was... _


	3. In Which Justina Finds Herself in an Imp

**In Which Justina Finds Herself in an Impossible Place and Meets Her New Friend**

* * *

Justina drifted awake, a deep ache in the marrow of her bones. She blinked until the fuzzy shapes around her coalesced into recognizable forms. A quiet uncomfortable sound crawled up out of her throat. As her eyes focused she saw a woman leaning over her, a strangely familiar woman, although Justina knew with absolute certainty she had never seen anyone who looked like her before. She was small and delicate. Her eyes were very dark, the pupil blending into the iris and hardly any whites. From a distance her eyes might have looked almost normal, if unusually large, but this close Justina could see that the pupils were rectangular bars. And twitching toward her groan the woman's ears were delicate, long, tapering to points, and the same soft light brown as her hair. A deer's ears. Justina closed her eyes again. This was impossible. Just another dream. It didn't feel like a dream, but dreams never did when you were inside of them.

"She's awake! She's going to be okay!"

It was the voice that made the connection in Justina's mind, the missing piece. She mumbled "Xanaria?"

"Yes! It's okay, we're safe now."

"You should be dead!" The new voice sounded very chipper about this, "but you're not, so that's okay."

Justina opened her eyes again to see a fuzzy face mere inches from her own. It was upside down and swinging slightly. She blinked at it.

"You didn't need to do that, though. That hurt. You could have just had Xanaria come back and I could have opened the door. You aren't supposed to come through together like that, it doesn't work. How did you do that anyway? And why aren't you both dead? Or lost? Or lost and dead? You need a bath, would you like one? I have several." It blinked back at her.

"What?"

"Let her be," Xanaria swung the creature carefully out of Justina's line of vision, "I think she got hit a lot harder than I did and she doesn't need to be able to count your boogers."

"I don't have boogers."

Justina turned her head, and regretted it instantly. Dark clouds boiled around the edges of her vision and her head felt like something pointy was being jammed between her eyes. She closed her eyes again, and swallowed hard against the rising nausea.

Justina felt a cool dampness on her forehead, and the pain eased slightly.

"Give it a moment, but then I'm going to help you sit up. You need to drink some water and I'm worried what will happen if you start choking right now."

"Okay."

When the pain had receded a bit, Xanaria put a gentle arm around Justina's shoulders and helped her sit up, tucking pillows around her to keep her upright. She also helped her hold the cup. At first Justina didn't think she would be able to keep the water down. But as she drank the pain and nausea did lessen. She took a deep breath. And gagged. Something smelled strongly of old vomit. Looking down she realized it was her. He jacked was missing, but she could see the stains all along her right arm and splashes across her pants.

"Oh god."

"Yeah. Sorry. I got your jacket off and the nice creature who lives here helped me get you away from the puddle, but I wasn't in any condition myself last night to get you properly cleaned up."

Justina looked at her new friend, concerned. She hadn't noticed earlier but Xanaria looked beaten up. She had dark bags under her eyes, her face was pale, and the hand holding the cup was shaking slightly.

"Are you okay?" Justina asked her.

"Yeah, I only got a little of it. I didn't pass out, although I was thrown away from the Metastone pretty roughly. It passes, and at least we aren't dead so there's that."

"There is that, I suppose." Justina chuckled a little, but cut it off when she felt it trying to twist toward hysterical. "There is that."

"About that." The tan furry creature dropped down beside them. "Have you figured out _why _you aren't Dead? I didn't feel the Metaverse twist to save you. I think I would have felt it. I wonder why I think that?"

"Okay, we've gone through a lot already for asking this question but what is the Metaverse?"

They cocked their head confused, "It's the Metaverse."

"But what does that mean?"

"That is a really big question, and most of the answers come down to: I don't know." They ran a little paw across their face, looking painfully embarrassed. "I think I did once. Smaller questions, please!"

"Maybe later." Xanaria put in. "I don't think any of us are quite up to unraveling the mysteries of the universe right now."

"Metaverse."

"That either."

"Okay!" They whipped out a long tail and wrapped it around one of the many vines hanging from the ceiling, but when they went to launch themselves upward they flinched and tumbled back down curled protectively around a blood soaked stomach. "Oops."

"Sleeping Goddess!" Xanaria yelped "What happened? Why didn't you say something?"

"I did say something. I said 'that hurt.' You two shouldn't have torn through the place between us like that, it's not proper and it damages things."

"Let me look at that."

"It's okay. I'll heal. You will too. But for now it hurts, gotta be careful!" And with that the creature disappeared around a bush, then they popped their head back around and said "There's a bath over that way about 15 yards," They pointed with a tail, "When you're ready for it." And vanished again.

Xanaria asked, "Do you think you can go back to sleep? That would probably be the best way to heal, if you can."

Justina thought longingly of slipping back into unconsciousness for a while, but took stock of herself and sighed, knowing she would never be able to. "No. I think if you can help me to that bath that might be the best thing for me right now."

Xanaria nodded. Through trial and error, they got Justina to her feet. When they were both standing Xanaria barely came up to Justina's shoulder. Still, by leaning together and putting their arms around each other they managed to stagger off in the direction of the bath. Feet sinking deep into emerald green moss, Justina kept her eyes on the ground and their footing while Xanaria made sure they were moving in the right direction. Justina blinked and squinted. She kept thinking she saw little glimmers of light coming up through the moss. She dismissed it as another symptom of the damage she had taken. It would pass.

After a few slow and painful minutes of walking they came between two bushes, and there it was. A wide bathtub made of some silvery substance with wide flat seal flippers for feet sitting out in the open. It was screened only by a loose circle of chest high bushes. It was already full, hip deep in steaming clear water. There was no shower head but there was a bucket. It was clipped to one side of the tub and made from the same silvery material.

There were three chairs in the little circle of bushes. Letting go of Xanaria, Justina staggered over to one of them and sat. With a groan she bent over to untie and remove her boots. She heard Xanaria make an odd sound. Looking up, Justina saw Xanaria was looking at the bathtub and blushing a delicate pink.

"Erm, you can go first." Xanaria said, "I'll see if I can get the caretaker of this place to show me where some towels are, and hopefully some clean clothes."

"I hadn't thought of that. Thank you Xanaria, you're a lifesaver. I mean, you were literally today, but also figuratively with this." Justina knew she sounded like an idiot but she was exhausted and the words just wouldn't come out right.

Xanaria nodded and smiled a tired smile her blush receding. Then she turned and left again, even her limp looking graceful. Justina shook her head, and finished pulling off her boots already looking forward to a long soak.

* * *

A couple hours later Justina was lying in the hot water feeling worlds better. She was admiring the silvery material of the tub. It was textured on the bottom to produce a good grip. It had a clear resin or plastic coating behind which Justina could see little circuits, like those in a solar panel.

"A solar powered bathtub?" She mused aloud quietly. "What would you even use electricity for in a bathtub?"

"Nope!" The fluff ball was back. "Not solar powered here. But it is powered by ambient light and the slight motion of the air. It keeps the water warm and clean all the time!"

Justina thought she should be embarrassed by the creatures' arrival, but she didn't have the energy.

"Ah, I suppose that makes sense."

"Xannie found these! She said you would want them." They laid a grecian looking dress across the back of a chair. Although it seemed newly made, it's design and fabric were ancient styles. A powder blue fluffy towel followed it over the back of the chair before she got a good look.

"She doesn't like nicknames."

"Oh. Okay! Xanaria found these! She said you would want them." They nodded, seemingly pleased with themselves.

"Thank you. She'll probably be wanting a bath of her own soon, won't she? I should get out." The idea did not feel like a pleasant one but at least it was possible to contemplate now. The ache had been warmed from her muscles, though it still lingered in her bones.

"Oh no! I found her a bath of her own. She said you might need a while." They scratched absently at their side and Justina noticed a thick off white bandage wrapped securely around their middle. It had some small red spots where it was already beginning to bleed through.

"Are you okay?"

"No. But I will be. Xanaria told me I had to let her bandage me. She said it would keep my insides in and that I shouldn't drip on things while I'm waiting for it to heal. She was right. It helps me move easier. I'm not used to being hurt."

Justina's stomach clenched. "I am so sorry."

"You didn't mean to. And you didn't know. So that's okay."

"Still, I'm sorry"

"Thank you and," they looked a little ashamed, "I won't be able to get you home easily. There was a lot of momentum imparted when you came through and we went spinning off wildly. Getting too close to metaverses hurts right now so I can't really connect anywhere, but I think your world will be especially hard until I'm all healed. The Metastone has more range, Xanaria could go out to an avatar, but I can't get anyone out in person right now."

"Could I use the Metastone?"

"No," they giggled, "Only pilots can use the Metastone."

"How do you know I'm not a pilot?"

They cocked their head, eyes wide. "You aren't."

Justina let it go. "Okay. There's no rush, I'm sorry I got you in this mess. I will need to go home when you are better, though. Those people who were chasing us have my husband and I have to find out what they've done with him."

She sat up suddenly staring at her left hand. Her head spun, and she wasn't sure if it was from the sudden movement or the realization that her wedding ring wasn't on her finger.

"My coat! Xanaria said she took my coat because it was covered in vomit. Where did she put it?"

The creature hopped back a step or two. "It's back where you left it. It's still really icky."

Justina climbed from the bath. She still felt like she'd been hit by a bus, but she could move on her own. She grabbed the towel, and after a cursory rub down, slung on the grecian dress. It was a little rough against her damp skin but she barely noticed. She ran the towel over her hair, grateful it was short enough that it didn't take long to dry, and tossed the towel back over the chair.

"Can you show me please? I'm not very good with directions even at the best of times."

It didn't take long for them to make their way back to the place where she had woken up. There was a soft blanket laid out and a couple pillows that she must have slept on, although she had been in no state to notice them when she first came to. About 10 feet from the blanket she saw nasty scorch marks on the moss that covered the ground. They spread from a burned out area just a bit larger than a human. Across it was splashed dried vomit and she could see drag marks where Xanaria must have pulled her out of it. The vomit was only visible on the burned moss though, the places it should have continued onto the green moss were already gone. Absorbed by the moss, maybe. And there, abandoned and crumpled on the moss, was her jacket.

Justina's heart sank. It wasn't her coat, it was her green jacket. She remembered carefully removing her ring and placing it in the little inside pocket of her coat, and then zipping closed the pocket because she had done that everyday, every morning for weeks just before entering the library. She'd started twisting it around her finger every time she was waiting for a page to load. Every time she thought of Tom. It had become painful. When she had noticed the blister she got annoyed with herself. So she put it in her coat pocket until she was done with her research for the day and then put it back on. She knew it wasn't in her green jacket. Still, she checked every pocket in it, uncaring of the mess she was getting on her hands. Oddly, the jacket was clean in the places that had been pressed against the moss all night, but Justina barely noticed.

She saw her bag nearby, the one thing she had grabbed before starting to run. She dug through that as well. She a broken pen that had leaked all over the outsides of her notebooks, but no ring. She sat there in silence for a moment trying to think if there was anywhere else it could be, besides locked away in a world she couldn't reach.

"Do you want a space of your own?" The fluffball piped up. "Then you can keep all your things there and you won't keep losing them."

"Oh, um... Yes, that would be nice."

"Wonderful! Pick a spot and pick out things you want! I have been decorating, but you can move anything you like. Oh, um. I don't think I can move a whole bed right now… but I can help move anything smaller that you need!"

"Maybe for now I could find a bed and sort of build some space around it."

"Okay! And when I'm healed, if you want to move to a different spot, I can help with that too!"

"Thank you." Justina was suddenly very tired. The bath, the lessening of her pain, the adrenaline and disappointed shame of losing her wedding ring, it was all suddenly too much and she really wanted to lie down.

"You should be dead, so you can do all your gathering together after you sleep. We can find a bed first, you sleep on it, and then you can do all the other things people do when they're alive!"

"Thank you. Can you show me the way?"

"Okay. What kind of bed do you like?"

"What's closest?"

"A medical cot."

"What's the second closest?"

"A big fluffy thing all full of feathers."

"Let's go for that one."

They walked in silence for a minute, or Justina walked, the fluffy creature tried to swing between the vines, but it looked painful and they flinched with each hop.

Hoping she wasn't being horribly rude Justina tentatively offered. "I could carry you, that doesn't look comfortable and it's clearly my fault, so if it would help I'll gladly carry you. You can point me in the direction to go."

"Okay."

Their little hand like paws clung tightly to the neckline of her grecian dress. One tail wrapped twice around her waist, the other tail pointed her in the direction she needed to go, and they slowly made their way. They were very light for being the size of a large house cat and Justina was grateful for it.

After a moment of silence Justina asked "What is this place?"

"This is my home."

"But where are we?"

"Right now? Spinning between metaverses. I'm doing my best to keep us from bumping into any, that could be very unpleasant."

"So, then, this place is yours and you guide it through space?"

"Nope. But also yes if it helps."

"What?"

"I'm it's and we ride what are like, and aren't at all like, currents between metaverses. I think we were a lot more once."

"But you choose where it takes us. We can go anywhere."

"Yes, precisely! But also no not at all."

"Can you be a little clearer?"

"Not really. You're missing a couple dimensions, poor little things."

"Can you take us where we want to go?"

"Sometimes, if the currents are kind. It could take a while. I can take you where you need to go, at least when you're needed there."

"So, it's like a ship riding interconnected rivers."

"Okay, if that helps. But not really."

"If I talk about it that way, will I usually be able to come to the proper conclusions?"

"Define what you mean by usually."

"More than three quarters of the time."

"Oh! Then yes. River boats is usually right."

"And so then you're like the pilot of the boat."

"No. Xanaria's a pilot."

"I still don't know what that means."

"She piloted you."

"What?"

"She went inside and pushed you around."

"It wasn't like that at all!"

"Maybe not, but it could have been. So that's what she is. A pilot."

"Are… there are lots of people who can do that?"

"Define lots."

"I don't know, thousands?"

"Then yes. There are lots."

"You're telling me that I could have run into any number of these pilots in my life!"

"Oh! You mean just in your Metaverse. Then no by your definition there are not lots."

"You know what, as many questions as that answer brings up, I don't think I can deal with that right now. But we will come back to that later."

"Okie dokie."

"So, if you wont use the word pilot in the nautical sense, would you say you're like the captain of the boat?"

"Oh no, Captain's give orders that other people ignore so that they can do their jobs. I just do stuff."

"What about the skipper then?"

They cock their head slightly. "Yes. I am like the skipper, and also the tiller, and also the ship's cat. And also- oh hi Xanaria!"

Coming from the other direction Xanaria, smiled and waved "Hey, guys! Look what I found! Clean underthings!"

"Oh, thank God! Where were they?" Justina asked.

"I'll show you. What are you guys talking about?"

"I was trying to get the little skipper here to explain things to me."

Xanaria grinned, "Oh, no bad idea. I'm glad I got back before they turned your head inside out."

"They did their best." Justina grinned back.

"Skipper huh? I like it." Xanaria looked at the creature still clinging happily to Justina. "Can I call you Skipper?"

"Sure! I like that. Skipper, skipper skipper skipper."

"Well, at least something good came out of this conversation." Justina sighed, "I don't have to keep calling you That Little Fluff Ball anymore."

Skipper looked up at her "I like that too!"

"If it's all the same to you, Skipper is much less of a mouthful." Xanaria admitted.

"Hello! I am a Skipper!"

"Indeed you are, Skipper." Justina ruffled the fur between their oversized ears. "Do you mind if we make a little detour so Xanaria can show me where she found those?"

* * *

A short time later Justina fell into an old fashioned four poster bed. It's canopy had been torn away, the wood was badly scratched, and the fluffy comforter smelled faintly of chickens, but in that moment it was the most perfect bed in the world. She blinked up at the impossible ceiling for a moment but fell asleep before she could figure out what was off about it.

She slept deeply and dreamed vividly of running barefoot through a dripping forest. Of the sound of hunting horns. And of a beautiful woman with velvet soft rabbits ears and a mouth that smiled easy but always had a bit of melancholy tucked at the edges. She dreamed of something important, something left undone, but it shredded like mist before she woke.

* * *

Xanaria knew she should go to sleep too, she hurt, and not just physically. She felt like she'd been awake for days, fallen out of a tree, rolled down a hill, and disappointed her mother. There was an ache deep down in her bones that sounded like what her grandfather used to complain about when the weather was changing. She knew she should sleep the worst of it away, but she was walking instead.

She looked around with wide eyes. Half the strange and incredible things she had seen when she had first walked through this space had names now. She looked at the strange lightweight and sharp cornered table with the impractical drawers and her mind told her it was a "file cabinet." The small and impossibly lifelike paintings pressed between the pages of the book she found inside of it were "Photographs."

The spidery runes inscribed on way too many things in this place spoke inside her head now. She had found a fine smooth stoneware cup with a painting of a fox on it. Before she had enjoyed the picture, but now she knew that the runes on the bottom said: "Microwave and Dishwasher safe Made in China" The big ones on the front told her, "Checkmate" and tiny ones told her "Copyright: GalaxyTails"

So instead of sleeping she wandered between bushes recognizing things she had never seen before in her life. Her eyes were wide with awe as she saw a "bicycle" and a "basketball hoop" and a coiled up string of "fairy lights" which, despite the name, she knew were completely harmless.

_I know I'll need to rest soon, but I can handle another minute or two- oh _look! _It's called a wireless power tool kit! That actually makes sense now…_


	4. In Which Justina Explores and Skipper H

**In Which Justina Explores and Skipper Heals**

* * *

Justina woke up feeling better. She was still stiff and achy, but it was no longer the terrifying deep down ache and clawing fatigue that had stayed with her even through the bath. She lay quietly for a time letting her mind wander as she gazed up at the vines looping across the glowing ceiling.

_Wait. Ceiling?_

She sat up and for the first time really looked around at the subtle wrongness that had niggled at the back of her mind. Until now she had been too preoccupied and stressed to notice many details in this safe environment. But now she realized what was wrong. It was like she was both inside and outside at the same time. There were vines hanging and climbing and twining overhead and looping down to the ground. She had noticed the fluffball using them, but she had unconsciously just assumed they hung from trees. But there were no trees. Short bushes of many kinds, certainly, but nothing as tall or sturdy as a tree. The vines seemed to grow up all over the distant walls and ceiling. Strangest of all, both walls and ceiling glowed through the vines with a clear steady light.

Justina got up, put the Grecian dress back on, and realized that she needed a bathroom. She looked around and not sure what else to do, began to dig down into the moss.

_Just like camping, _she thought uncomfortably_._ The dirt was soft and loose and it made digging easy. The deeper it got the more she started seeing little specks of glowing rock. She dug until the number and size of the glowing stones made it hard to keep digging by hand. Much deeper than she had planned. Justina carefully extracted a lumpy rock about the size of her thumb. Clear and soft the light shone, and with it the stone had a shimmering opalescent sheen.

_This is absolutely beautiful_.

She went to put it in her pocket but then realized she was still wearing the old fashioned dress. So she tucked it in her bra, finished her business, and filled in the hole.

Justina couldn't really tell which wall was closer because she couldn't see where the walls became the ceiling. _Clues might be_ _hidden behind the vines, but I doubt it. This whole place looks like a domed room_. Looking around she noticed a large blue thing in the distance that was taller than anything else she could see. With a shrug headed towards it. _At least I'll have a landmark._

She began walking, keeping the blue structure in front of her. The ground was covered in a thick layer of moss, but surprisingly flat. There were bushes everywhere and scattered between them were all sorts of random objects.

Justina saw an armoire still scattered with someone's makeup and hair brushes. A battered old chest that Justina would have been unsupprised to learn held a heap of pirates gold and jewels. A blue and grey fisherman's dinghy with salt ravaged paint named Pipsqueak. Another bed, this one little more than a tanned animal hide firmly strapped to eight posts. An oven range lying on its side. A bright gold pleather bean bag chair. A shiny black briefcase. And many other odd and curious things. It took an effort of will not to stop and inspect them. She promised herself she would make time for that later.

She realized as she got closer the blue thing was a water tower. _That makes sense. If this place is a closed room or cavern, then any water would have to be brought in or recycled. _

She had to rest several times, which annoyed her. She had begun to take her stamina for granted after riding her bike everywhere for the last month. It scared her a little too. She didn't know how she had gotten here but the continued proof of the toll it had taken on her was unsettling.

It took her over half an hour to reach the water tower. It was bigger than it seemed from a distance, and made of blue high grade plastic. A wooden scaffolding held it up over her head. Just beyond it the floor began to curve upward until it was a wall. The moss thinned as it got steeper until it was all gone leaving only shining stone and vines. The walls were rough and craggy and the vines were anchored firmly in every crevice. They even grew around and through holes in the rock.

_No, not holes. Handles. _She walked closer until the ground became too steep to walk up easily, staring at the rocky loops sticking out from the wall at regular intervals. They were too rough to seem manufactured and too regular to be natural. They looked to be designed for human sized hands to climb up, but the vines had taken them over and they worked even better for holding the vines to the wall.

Justina scrambled up the incline, trying to get a closer look at the glowing stone, she caught hold of one of the loops of rock to keep from sliding back down the slope.

_Huh, the glow itself isn't that bright_. She could look directly at it without discomfort. _It's just that there's so much gently glowing stone it seems like day time. Are there even days here? Does the light ever go away?_

"What is this stuff?" She mused aloud.

"Mostly quartz, with some other stuff mixed in."

Justina froze for a second startled by the unexpected voice. Then she leaned back, the rock handle keeping her from falling over backward, and tilted her head up toward the voice. She saw Skipper hanging from a vine just above her head. Eye to eye they both hung there for a long moment.

Justina broke the silence with the most obvious of the thousand questions flooding her mind. "What other stuff?"

Skipper wrinkled their nose up, embarrassed. "I'm not sure exactly. Something metallic tasting and something sort of greyish blue." They sighed mournfully. "And I was so proud of the all-knowing omnipresent vibe I had going too, oh well."

Justina laughed and let go of the wall, half jumping, half sliding down the steep mossy slope to the ground.

Skipper slipped down the vines to join her, and curled up on the moss.

"Is it always glowing?" She asked. "Can you turn it off to sleep?"

"It is the way it is." Skipper told her, rolling over on their back. "I can't change what it's made of, especially since I can't quite remember. And if you mean while you sleep, no I'm sorry. But I do have quite a collection of eye cover thingys. If you mean when I sleep, I don't."

"You don't sleep at all?"

"Well, I guess I do sleep sometimes. But I only need to if something is wrong. Like when I'm hurt, or if I've worn myself out by pushing too hard while navigating. I slept while you two did for a little while, and I'll probably need to sleep some more later if I want to stop leaking when I take this off." Skipper ran a gentle hand like paw over their bandaged belly. "I usually don't eat either, although I can sort of taste things."

"Oh." Her stomach, quiet until now, growled suddenly.

"But since I know you need to eat, I brought you some food. That's why I was looking for you, once I knew you woke up."

"You knew I woke up?"

"Yes. I saw you."

"Where were you? I didn't see you."

"Up there." Skipper pointed with a tail into the high reaches of the vines over their heads. "I can see most things from up there. I'll be right back."

Skipper scrambled back up the vines again. Justina watched them unhook a basket from a strong leaf stem and climb back down again.

When she looked inside the basket she saw a couple handfuls of small cubes that looked to be made of greenish dried foam. She picked one up between two fingers. It had more weight to it than as it's texture implied. She glanced at Skipper uncertainly, but they were distracted playing with their tails, twisting them into complicated knots and patterns. Her stomach rumbled again. With a sigh Justina popped the cube in her mouth. It crunched easily and tasted a little salty, and like the memory of chalk.

"Thank you for the food. Um… what is it?"

"I don't know what they're called exactly, Jake left them behind. They're from a metaverse without planets, only space stations. I know they're tasless, but they are the only food stuff I have left that didn't go bad. They're designed to last generations. Jake called them emergency rations. He also said people would find ingenious ways to avoid eating too many of them so I included a zucchini. I only have a couple from my garden. I tried, but I'm not good at plants that want real sunlight."

She looked again and peeking out from under the chalky cubes was a little zucchini just a bit bigger than her thumb.

"Thank you. This is wonderful." She said with a smile.

Skipper beamed. "More questions?"

"Is there anywhere I can find some more modern clothes? I feel weird in this dress. I keep wishing I had something with pockets." She touched the stone digging into her ribs.

"Probably! All sorts of things have been brought here by visitors and some of it gets left behind again. I'm sure there's something somewhere that's more like what you're used to."

"Would it be okay if I went looking?" Justina felt a little daunted thinking of such a scavenger hunt.

"Of course! Or if you want to wash your old clothes I could show where the washing tools are."

"Oh! Yes, that would be best I think."

"Okay! You can eat while we go! Oh, and if you ever need me just shout, okay?"

"What if you're out of earshot?"

Skipper wiggled their big ears meaningfully. "You're never out of earshot if you shout, this place isn't that big."

Skipper led her around the edge of what she had started to think of as a cavern. She was relieved to notice that they were climbing happily through the vines again, though they weren't trying any big leaps. She ate as she walked. The cubes were surprisingly filling, and after only a few she decided she'd had enough. To wash the chalky taste from her mouth she ate the zucchini. It was small, but very tasty. After about 5 minutes of walking she saw a refrigerator humming gently sitting on a bed of moss. Beyond it was a sleek looking front loading washer dryer set. Beyond that was something that looked like a dry cleaners press. Looking around she realized that aside from the bathtub, which had been self powered, this was the only place she had yet to see electronic devices set up as though they were expected to function. When she asked about that Skipper nodded.

"I don't like it when the cords get tangled up in my vines so it's easiest if all the things that stay hooked up to electricity stay near each other."

"That makes a lot of sense. So then, where do you get the power from?"

Skipper showed her over to two very odd devices hooked up to a jury rigged contraption that looked to be part inverter and part converter for a dozen different plug types, half of which Justina hadn't even seen. Not even when she had been researching what she would need for her fantasy of traveling.

"These are the Geopiezo Microgenerator and the Electrophillia Battery."

"What?"

"Geopiezo Microgenerator. It uses the motion of the ground and crystals to make electricity, and it makes a lot of electricity even though it's small."

"Okay, but I meant the other one. The electric love battery?"

"Friendship battery. The more friendship there is nearby the faster it fills the battery. Like a windmill."

"That's ridiculous."

"Maybe where you come from," Skipper swug upside down to look her right in the eyes. "But in the metaverse Amiri came from they were found in most households."

"Who's Amiri?"

"An old friend of mine. She's been gone for a very long time." Skipper dropped the rest of the way down to the moss and snuffled at it gently not looking at her. Justina, feeling awkward, looked closer at the bizarre device.

It was roughly conical with a flowery meadow painted across it. Up one side was a strip of unpainted grey metal right in between two painted flowering fruit trees. One tree was a little sloppy and abstracte, the other was almost photorealistic. In the unpainted strip was a column of 13 stripes set one above the next each about an inch wide and a quarter inch tall. They were all dark except the bottom one which glowed yellow and Justina finally recognized it as a power level meter.

"That's really low, isn't it?"

"Yes. It got all empty before Xanaria arrived. It's been a long time since there was anyone else here."

There was a pause. "Can I hug you?" Justina asked, "It sounds like you could use a hug."

"I would quite like a hug."

Justina gathered them up in a gentle hug, being very careful of their bandage. When she set Skipper down again they were both smiling, and maybe it was her imagination but the yellow light looked a little greener.

* * *

It took Justina a while to gather everything. She had to keep pausing to catch her breath even though she was only walking. She gathered the disgusting clothes she had arrived in and bundled them up in the sheets she had used last night, figuring she could do it all at once and be done. Xanaria found Justina as she was taking a breather, dirty laundry set down beside her. Xanaria looked fresh and cheerful, nothing like the painful exhaustion of the previous day.

"Hey," Justina smiled, relieved she didn't sound too out of breath. "How are you feeling?"

"Much better." Xanaria smiled back at her. "I've always bounced back well. How are you?"

"Not bad." Xanaria looked sceptical. "Not as bad as I expected to be," Justina clarified. "The bath helped a lot, and you were right about sleep."

"Would you like a hand? What are you doing?"

"Laundry. As nice as this dress is, I want to be able to wear something with pockets again."

"Oh. Well, I can fetch you a bucket and soap, you don't need to find a stream or anything."

Justina looked at her for a moment, confused. "I'm not washing them by hand..." She said slowly.

"Oh, did you figure out about the moss? It does do a remarkably thorough job of cleaning things it touches if you don't mind waiting. But… you wouldn't need to take things anywhere for that."

"I don't... I'm taking them to the machine."

"The what?"

"The washing machine. Come on, I'll show you."

Xanaria picked up the bundle of laundry before Justina could. Grateful, Justina let her carry it and led the way to the water tower and the path she had taken with Skipper to reach the washer dryer set. There was a box on the ground next to it with some powdered laundry detergent. Justina showed Xanaria how to add detergent, select a setting, and start it running.

Once it was going Justina laughed, "My great adventure is starting to feel a lot like doing chores."

Xanaria turned to her, eyes wide, "What are you talking about? This grand machine does the laundry for us! How cool is that?"

Justina just smiled, and enjoyed watching Xanaria get excited over laundry.

* * *

Justina changed back into her own clothes as soon as they were dry. She had even washed the bag that held her notebooks, taking everything out first and cleaning what she could by hand. She was relieved to find that the ink on the outside of her notebooks only crept in a little at the edges and hadn't destroyed her notes. Xanaria had giggled maniacally watching the drier humm and spin with both hands pressed against it's warm window and when it was done she'd run off to find another load to do. It had been absolutely adorable.

Justina sat on the moss, alone for the moment, and content. She began to repack her now clean cloth bag. She slipped in the precious notebooks, then her colored pens and her two broken pencils, the glowing rock she had dug up, and finally her wallet with her frozen credit cards and her dwindling supply of bills. Everything else had been in her coat pockets. She lay back on the moss and looked at her left hand running her thumb across the place her wedding ring should have sat. As she was drifting off to an unexpected nap she had a sudden realization. If the people who told her to stop looking for Tom got so worked up when she had looked up "metaverse," maybe Tom wasn't with them. Maybe he was out here somewhere.

* * *

Justina opened her eyes when she heard Xanaria start a load of laundry, giggling. She sat up and looked at her left hand again.

"Maybe he's here."

Xanaria looked back at her confused, "Who?"

"Tom. Maybe he's out here somewhere. The people who told me he was dead got really upset when we tried to research metaverses. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place."

"Maybe. But wouldn't that make him harder to find?"

"If Tom isn't at home then finding him there would be impossible. I don't know. At least it feels like a step in the right direction."

"Hmmm." Xanaria didn't sound convinced. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"Why do you call him Tom?"

"That's his name."

"His name is Thomas. You don't like being called Tina and I don't like being called Ri so we don't call each other those things. He doesn't seem to like being called Tom, so why don't you call him Thomas?"

"He always called me Tina."

There was a pause. When Xanaria realized Justina thought that was all the explanation needed, she prompted. "So?"

"It was… It was just what we called each other."

"Did you ever tell him you didn't want to be called Tina?"

"He knew."

"How do you know that?"

"He always knew. It was just that it was okay when he used it."

"That's not true. I was inside your mind for several hours, if you recall. You hated it."

"I… Well, it was true once." Justina shrugged, "I guess I didn't really notice when that changed."

"I don't understand."

"Honestly, I'm not sure I do either. We… had problems."

"I remember. But that seems like an easy place to start."

"I don't need marriage counseling from you."

"Fine. I'm Sorry."

"No I… I shouldn't have snapped. Maybe you're right." Justina looked away, shredding a leaf from a nearby bush. "Tom always… Thomas… My husband always seemed to think that if he didn't try then he couldn't fail. So he never tried. And he never succeeded. And somehow he took that as proof that he should never try. I just wanted something, anything really, I… I don't know."

"That's why you left?"

"I wanted him to come after me."

"That makes no sense."

"Something had to give."

"But…"

"It doesn't matter. He could be in danger. I'm not leaving him to the mercy of those assholes." Justina pushed herself to her feet. "I need to get some water. Have fun with the washing machine."

She left quickly heading toward the water tower. Xanaria let her go.

* * *

Justina got a drink of water, and then started walking. She meandered aimlessly through the bushes for a while. After a couple of minutes she noticed the bushes weren't entirely random. They looked like they had been planted in swooping lines all across the ground. Sometimes they were far apart and sometimes they were close together. Often they made little clearings in ovaloid and circular shapes, like the one that held the bathtub.

She came into one of these semisurounded clearings and saw that it had been set up like a bedroom. There was a twin sized bed along one side with a deep red comforter and a little table. Continuing around the circle there was a desk and chair, A full length standing mirror in a wooden frame, two dressers and a little standing closet for hanging clothes. Right in the middle was a large circular art nouveau rug in lovely blues and greens.

_Is… is this someone's bedroom?_ She carefully stepped out again. _But I haven't seen anyone here besides Xanaria and somehow this room doesn't feel like her style_._ I mean there's also Skipper of course, but I think they live up in the vines somewhere. _

Although it felt silly she called out, "Skipper! Can I ask you something?!"

She watched the vines above her until she saw movement. She smiled as Skipper hopped their way down to her.

"Yes?" Skipper asked.

"Is there someone living here?"

Skippers ears drooped. "No. Not anymore. I haven't gotten around to redecorating yet. Zuci always thought it was funny when I tried to make things look nice even though I was learning from her. She said balance is the key, but you can't just make everything be laid out perfectly in a grid pattern. Because imbalance is also important. Evenly uneven. Edges and middles. It was very confusing but I've been practicing. Still, I didn't want to mess up her space. She'd made it so perfect."

"Oh." Justina looked back into the room. It felt peaceful, happy, and collected. Almost as though its owner's personality had been draped over it like a dust cloth and left behind. "Could you help me find another clearing like this so I could set up a space of my own? This is so perfect. She knew what she was doing."

"You could just stay here. It's been many many years, at least as I've experienced them. I don't think she's coming back and it would make her happy to know someone loved something she created. Artists are like that."

"What happened to her?"

"I don't know." Skippers ears drooped. "Do you want the room?"

"Yes!"

"Wonderful! I need to go nap, see if I can heal any of this mess. I told Xanaria where I put the food cube rations."

"Okay, feel better!"

"Thank you! If you need anything shout and I'll wake up. I'll heal better if it's one continuous nap though."

And Skipper disappeared back into the vines high overhead.

Justina walked into her new room and sat down right in the middle of the rug. She looked around and smiled, taking a moment to enjoy this feeling of belonging in a place so far from home. Then guilt began to worm it's way in; _you aren't supposed to enjoy yourself, you're supposed to save Tom. Thomas. Xanaria was right, damn it. _She took a deep breath and reminded herself firmly,_ look, Skipper can't let me out until they heal. The best thing I can do is leave them alone until then. Waiting is the fastest way to get back to searching._

Trying to shake it off, she got up and walked around her new room. She looked in the drawers. Everything was folded into little bundles and meticulously organized. The most obvious were the shirts folded Kon Mari style in their drawer. Front to back they were light to dark and from left to right they were green to blue to purple to red to orange. Nothing yellow. It was satisfying to look at but also a little unsettling. She carefully lifted out a shirt. It looked very ordinary to her, a blue rayon t-shirt with a rippling green ocean pattern across it. One look at the inside seams showed her that it had been altered to fit someone perfectly. On an impulse she tried it on. It was a little big, but the mirror showed her that it looked good. Not perfect the way she was sure it would have on Zuci, but not bad. That was good, she had been worried about what she would do with the perfectly organized clothes if they hadn't fit her. Move the whole dresser somewhere she supposed. There was no way she would have been able to get herself to dump all those carefully set up and maintained clothes somewhere. They had been too well loved.

The next drawer down was all pants, folded and sorted in the same way. There were only two pairs of jeans and they were too long and too big around to wear comfortably, but there were also several pairs of leggings in different solid colors which, being stretchy, fit her just fine. Although, based on the length of the jeans, they had likely been capri's on Zuci. She had never been much for leggings but they were comfortable and they would work. She gasped when she saw the skirts in the second dresser. They were lovely multi colored things, every one of them, swirly and flowy and varied in length from mid thigh to brushing the ground. And every one of them had deep carefully hidden pockets added by a deft hand that still left the skirt seeming light and unburdened. Until she put one on Justina had never realized she wanted a skirt like that. The one she settled on for now was a swirling pattern of blue and green all flecked with white. When she moved, it looked like the sea churning up flecks of foam and drifting seaweed. It came to just above her knees. Under it she had a pair of leggings in a deep turquoise green and she loved the way they looked together. When she looked in the mirror she noticed that her hair had taken the last few weeks to soften from the rough hack job she had done on it. She was pleased to see that in this outfit it looked tastefully tousled and not like she'd taken a weed wacker to it. She left her shoes by the bed, curling her toes in the moss. She turned again to her reflection in the mirror and smiled.

* * *

The first thing Justina did after leaving her room was apologize to Xanaria. Together they explored Skipper's world. They started from the water tower and began walking around the edge of the cavern. It was roughly circular and by Justina's watch it took them almost three hours to walk all the way around. Xanaria showed Justina where she had set up a 'room' for herself.

She'd taken another of the little clearings and she had placed various boxes and trunks around the edge of the circle helping to define her space. In the middle she had laid out a soft king sized down comforter from a bed that had clearly been moved to just outside the clearing. She had a pillow there too, and when she was ready to sleep she rolled herself up in the comforter with moss as her mattress and the pillow under her head. In the morning she would turn her comforter over so the side she had been wrapped in was flat on the moss.

"That way the moss cleans it for me! And while that fabulous machine works a lot faster, the moss means I never have to worry about it!" Xanaria explained, "It's fantastic!"

* * *

Justina found a whole drawer full of colorful scarves in her new room, the kind that chemo patients wear. She took a moment, looking at them, and thinking about the woman whose space she had inherited. Then carefully closed the drawer again. _I'll never use them but that there's no harm leaving them be._

Xanaria, through careful experimentation, discovered that she too could climb in the vines. They supported her weight easily. But while the leafy bumpy nature of the vines made them easier to climb than ordinary rope, it was still hard and slow going. Justina didn't enjoy it, but in short bursts Xanaria had a lot of fun.

For the first few days they had been having trouble finding important locations and each other. They made do with guesswork and shouting each other's names until, watching Xanaria climb around in the vines, Justina had an idea. She went back to her room and opened the drawer of scarves. She chose one in bright red and orange that looked almost like it had been set on fire and climbed, slowly, and a little bit painfully, up a vine. Once she was a good 15 feet up the vine, 10 feet over the tallest nearby bush, she used her teeth and one hand to tie a scarf around it. Sliding back down she took a moment to catch her breath then grabbed a purple and blue scarf and took off toward the water tower. Each time she looked back she could still see the scarf marking her bedroom. She found Xanaria by the washing machines and explained what she was doing. Xanaria loved the idea and took the purple and blue scarf and tied it to a vine above the laundry room.

"We'll be able to find our way right back here from anywhere!"

"Exactly!"

Justina let Xanaria pick her favorite scarf, a silver metallic one with streaks of gold through it, and they use it to mark Xanaria's room. They tried marking the food area with a green one, but it didn't show up well against the green vines so they replaced it with one that had every color in the rainbow.

* * *

It was hard to tell how much time had passed because of the unchanging light and lack of weather. Justina was grateful that her watch had a date dial, but was always a little surprised by what it told her. She missed her phone, which might have given her more detail, but it had been in her coat pocket and was therefore out of her reach.

Her watch told her five days had passed when they began to run out of food. It wasn't gone yet, but Justina figured they only had a couple days worth left.

"I think we need to call Skipper."

"But they're sleeping."

"And they can go back to sleep soon, but we need food. And honestly I'm not sure they're sleeping so much as putting themselves in a light coma in order to heal."

"A what?"

"Nevermind, the point is we need food."

"There's still some."

"Yes. There are still some emergency rations. But we should really save some of them for emergencies."

"...Alright. I hope it'll be okay."

Justina took a deep breath and shouted, "Skipper! Sorry to bother you and wake you up, but we need more food soon. Are you well enough to let us out?"

They spent a minute, the two of them, looking up into the vines searching for a hint of movement.

"Maybe they didn't-" Xanaria began, when Skipper came hopping through the vines. They slowed down as they approached and paused at the scarf tied above the food area. Then they finished coming down.

"What's that for?"

Xanaria explained how they needed landmarks for navigation. Skipper paused for a moment thinking about it

"I like it! Simple, dignified, effective, and it doesn't make things harder for me." They began unwrapping their bandage as they spoke, "Thank you for waking me up. I had more healing to do than I thought. I'm not all better yet but I should be able to get close enough to a metaverse for you to go get food."

Under the bandage was a long hairless patch of raw pink skin, but Justina was glad to see that Skipper wasn't bleeding anymore.

"Great," said Justina, "If you can let me out near my apartment, I had a lot of canned food saved up in case of emergencies. And I can spend the rest of my cash on food at the nearest grocery store, and that should buy us enough time to figure out what to do next. It shouldn't take long."

"I'm sorry, Justina," Skipper ran their paws over their muzzle looking sad, "I can't reach your home metaverse right now. We're too… I guess 'far away' is the best I can explain."

"Oh." Justina felt her stomach drop. "I understand."

"But one of the metaverses within reach has a pretty similar feeling, maybe that one would work?"

"What does that mean?"

"It means it's very close to yours in most ways, but not identical. I don't know what the differences are, they might be more obvious than the similarities, but it's the best bet for finding what you need with the least amount of trouble."

"Okay, so we'll go there. Or.. is that okay with you Xanaria?"

"Food is food. Unless… What do the people there look like?"

Skipper blinked and shrugged. "No idea. Why does it matter?"

"Ah, well, if this world is like Justina's, then I won't blend in." Xanaria said, unconsciously smoothing down her ears.

"Why don't you use the Metastone? I can go in person, you can join me." Justina grinned at Xanaria. "We work well as a team anyway."

Xanaria grinned back, "that'll make it easier for us to get back as well, I suppose. I can leave and then I'll tell Skipper to open the door for you. No guessing, no need to leave the door open-"

"No tearing the world open and almost dying?"

"Yes, I would prefer no more of that."

"What? But it was so much fun last time!"

Xanaria rolled her eyes at Justina, but she was smiling.

Skipper looked confused. "I did not find it fun. Was that sarcasm?"  
"Yes, yes it was."

"Okay!"

"Joking aside though, I think this is a good plan." Xanaria said, "It feels… right, somehow."

"Let me grab a couple things and I'll be ready to go."

* * *

Five minutes later Justina was back. She had grabbed a jacket and her wallet, but decided she didn't know what else would be useful and anyway it was better to travel light.

She found Xanaria teaching Skipper what looked like a clapping game. Skipper was very enthusiastic about it, tails twisting around each other in concentration.

She watched for a moment, smiling, before they noticed her.

"We'll finish this later." Xanatria promised Skipper, getting to her feet. "Ready to go?"

"I think so? I can't know what we'll need so trying to bring everything useful would be pointless. I have some money though. Skipper said it was like my home so that might make things easier."

Xanaria nodded and turned back to Skipper. "Alright then. How does this work?"

Skipper nodded to one side where a fuzzy white hole opened in the air. "Justina steps through this and you already know how to use the Metastone. Good luck! I'll open the door again when Xanaria returns to tell me it's time. If she doesn't return before 100 hours passes I'll open a gate as close to where you are as I can. At least 100 hours for me. Time might pass differently for you. I know you now, so I can find you again, as long as you're in a place where the currents run true."

"Wait, what does that mean?"

Skipper cocked their heads, "A place that's right, a place that can support a door, like an important place, or an undamaged place."

"So... A natural place?"

"If natural is right in this metaverse."

"But I don't-"

"I can't hold the gate open much longer, please go. Just come back to where you came out of, if you can."

Justina nodded and stepped through the hole, hoping she would figure it out as she went.


	5. In Which Justina Gets Lost Looking For

**In Which Justina Gets Lost Looking For Food and Xanaria Learns About Breaking and Entering**

* * *

Justina tumbled for a moment, weightless, then regained her balance and stepped back out of the hole. She felt the shift, a slight jerk like stepping off an escalator. The first thing she felt was the wind on her face. She closed her eyes and smiled enjoying the sensation. The next thing she noticed was the smell, like cinnamon and apples and fresh green grass.

She waited a little while but Xanaria didn't arrive in her mind. _How long can it take to connect to the Metastone? Although I suppose Skipper did say time might seem to move differently. I can wait a little longer._

Justina sat down on the grass and looked around her. She was in a field splashed with wildflowers and surrounded by tall trees that were almost glowing orange and red in the late afternoon light of autumn. It was lovely, and made her feel young and full of awe. She wondered what kind of world this was. She hoped it was similar to home. She hoped it was similar enough she could use the money in her wallet to buy groceries. But a deep, wild, and hungry place in her heart wished it would be different. That there would be great magic or spaceships, fairies or flying cars. _That's silly. Skipper said it would be similar to my home metaverse. Still…_

She waited, enjoying the sunlight. After about ten minutes she began to get concerned. She closed her eyes and tried to root around inside herself for Xanaria's friendly presence. She felt the bond they had shared since they ran through the library together but couldn't sense her friend's consciousness. She tried to reach out, to feel her way along that bond. For a moment she thought it worked. She felt Xanaria. She was... concerned but trusting, and a little bored.

_That doesn't make sense. I'm probably imagining it, trying too hard._

Another fifteen minutes passed and Justina thought, _maybe I should just get started. I hope Xanaria shows up soon._

She stood, sighed, and stretched out her stiff legs.

From behind her she heard a soft baritone voice say, "Who are you?"

* * *

Xanaria knew instantly that she wasn't in Justina's head. It wasn't just that she was standing behind a row of mens coats inside a dark walk-in closet with a notepad full of someone else's credit card numbers, passwords, and other personal information. It was mostly that Elizabeth felt very different than Justina did. Elizabeth was very much in control at the moment, so Xanaria settled back and let her work. Elizabeth was doing breathing exercises to slow her heart and keep her body loose and still. At the same time she was thinking through several possible escape routes. Through the door they heard the sound of footsteps, the rolling of wheels, and the faint squeak of someone sitting in a leather chair. Xanaria started to get nervous but Elizabeth was having none of that, and pushed her all the way back into the farthest corner of her mind. Not wanting to get in the way, Xanaria let herself be pushed.

Elizabeth waited, patience and practice keeping her limbs loose, still, and uncramped, her breath slow and silent, and her heartbeat even. She was tucked into the off season closet that Mr. Kriston kept in his downstairs office space. Hopefully he wouldn't be too long. He had a fancy party going on outside and he was supposed to be out there. She had planned on him entertaining all night and for the blame to be spread out across too many people with too many lawyers and too much money for it to go anywhere. And if someone did go down she wouldn't lose any sleep over it. They were, for the most part, Mr. Kriston's crowd showing off their "generosity" by donating to "charity" although she knew from her pre-heist research that barely 5% of the money ever did anything more than get passed around between their deep pockets.

She ran through what she could do if he opened the closet and saw her there. She was wearing clothing that covered her entire body in dark shades of grey, blue and brown, so as not to stand out. Black, as she had learned, was terrible if there was any illumination around. Her best hope if he opened the door was to blend into the shadows behind his full length winter coats. She was very glad she had yet to steal anything that could be noticed as missing.

After a while she heard the door open and a woman's voice said, "Rupert, you needn't hide at your own party." There was laughter in her voice, and if you had never met her in person the threatening undercurrent could easily be missed. "People are wondering where you've run off too. Or with who."

"Alright Carol, I'll be out in a minute, I just had an idea and wanted to get to work right away. It could be a lucrative one. I know you like when the money comes in."

"Well, then, work on it after your party, silly man."

Elizabeth heard him sigh, and then the chair creaked again as Rupert Kriston followed his wife back out of the office. The door closed and the lock clicked. She counted fifty breaths to make sure he wouldn't be returning.

She was just about to move when a voice inside cautioned her, ~_Wait. I hear him coming back.~ _

Xanaria crept back out just a little and listened. With her Elizabeth was able to hear the hurried footsteps coming back down the hallway. She stayed put while Kriston, swearing once or twice, rummaged around in his desk. She heard him mutter a satisfied little huff and then heard the sound of a cell phone vibrate slightly as it got unlocked. He left again.

_Thank you. Handy skill._

_~I'm a little out of my depth, but I'll let you know if I hear anymore trouble.~_

Xanaria sank back again and watched as Elizabeth carefully and quickly found and picked the locks on the desk drawers one after another, jotting down social security numbers, bank account information, and anything else that might let her bleed him dry over the next few weeks. Then she carefully locked it back up again.

She knew he wouldn't keep anything significantly liquid or damaging in a backup office. She ignored the stack of twenties tucked in the back of the bottom drawer.

_~Isn't that a lot of money?~_

_If he escapes Carol and returns here it would be too easily missed. Don't worry. There will be more._

* * *

Justina whirled too quickly, and overbalanced slightly. She flung out her arms for stability and stared at the young man leaning against the tree behind her. He was tall, gently smiling, and barefoot with an easy grace in his every movement. He raised his hands, a little apologetically.

"Excuse me, I didn't mean to startle you, I was just wondering if you could use some help finding your way to town."

Justina stared at him for a moment as her heart rate slowed down, "Um, yes actually." She dropped her arms back to her sides. "I'm… very lost. If you could point me in the right direction, that would be really helpful."

He nodded knowingly, still leaning against the tree. "Your charm is an unpredictable one, I take it? Teleportation usually is."

Justina's mind went blank. _My charm? He didn't say that like a pick up line. Wait. Teleportation? _She opened her mouth but nothing came out.

He chuckled, a warm and friendly sound. "You don't need to look so shocked. I'm Rob, I'm an uncommonly strong Gardener from Crowstown. The tree told me it saw you step out of the air, and led me to you. I can help you get back to town and figure out how to get home."

As he talked Justina felt herself begin to smile. _Magic. He's talking about magic! This metaverse has _Magic!

"Thank you,'' she said. "That would be very helpful. I'm Justina"

* * *

Elizabeth slipped up the back stairway. It led straight from the kitchen to the rooftop garden with an unobtrusive landing on each floor so guests could get their breakfast in bed but wouldn't have to see servants while using the stairs. Since the party was on the ground floor everyone from the kitchens would be thoroughly tied up down there. The smells that drifted up from the kitchen were marvelous. They made Xanaria think longingly of meals that tasted like more than salty chalk. Then she was amused by herself.

_~My mother would give me such a lecture about gratitude for even thinking that. Having enough food of any kind wasn't something I knew before I met Skipper.~_

_I know what you mean. By the end of highschool, I made damn sure I possessed the skills to never go hungry again. I try to pay it forward when I do a job like this. Most of the cash I find tonight will go towards shelters and food banks all across the county. The electronic money can cover more ground, and if I'm careful how I route it I can keep most of it from being reclaimed._ She shook her head slightly._ Can't count on it until the job's done, though._ _But... I'll see if I can get a lot of canned food for you guys. Things that will keep until you need them._

_~Thank you!~_

They reached the fourth floor and Elizabeth was back to business. She had done her research and knew the layout of this building by heart. She made a beeline for the main office and in just under a minute had picked it's elegant and expensive lock. As she opened the door she felt the cool wash of a charm nullifying ward. Not having any charms on her, or planning to use hers even if it could be useful, Elizabeth was unaffected and unconcerned.

She slipped inside and locked the door behind her, not wanting anything to seem out of the ordinary. There was light from the windows, although it was already starting to fade. A quick scan of the room took in the desks, file cabinets, computers and three paintings on the walls.

She cast an appraiser's eye over the paintings. The one on the far wall was a genuine Van Gogh purchased at an auction last year. There had been a representative from a big museum with their eye on it, but he had disappeared the day before and the investigation was quickly dropped

The Waterhouse painting next to the door was also an original, and the doorway showed her that wall was an ordinary thickness. But the painting on the wall to the right and across from the windows, while gorgeous, was not by an artist whose name would make fortune hunters drool. It's frame was also significantly thicker than it needed to be. It was almost too easy.

_~It could be a decoy.~_

Elizabeth shrugged. _If it is, we'll know soon enough._

* * *

Justina followed Rob down a path winding through the trees. It was wide, but overgrown. She hadn't even noticed it until Rob walked right onto it. They walked in silence for a while. Justina wasn't sure what to say in this unfamiliar world, and Rob just seemed to be enjoying the forest. Eventually the silence, comfortable as it was, became too much for her.

"How far is it?" She asked.

He looked at her and smiled slightly as if he had forgotten she was there and was being pleasantly reminded. "Not long." He told her. "Maybe twenty minutes to get out of the park and another ten to town. Once there I could take you to the courthouse and they can figure out how to get you home. Or I could take you to the local diner first."

Justina opened her mouth, but before she could answer her stomach growled loud enough to be heard.

Rob chuckled softly. "Diner first it is then."

Justina wasn't sure how to ask 'does my money look like it's from an entirely different world' in a way that wouldn't sound insane. She did recognize the North Face logo on his jacket, so she hoped that their money would look the same too.

She hedged, "I, ah, I don't know if I can pay for it. I'm not sure how far I've come. Will they take this here?"

She held up a five dollar bill from her wallet. All her cards she had left behind, of course. Even if they did work here she wasn't okay with stealing money from someone.

He raised one eyebrow slightly but all he said was, "Yes, you're still on this side of the border, but don't worry about it. The diner has a collection box set up for people I find in the woods. It happens more often than you'd think."

"Ah, thank you."

They lapsed into silence again. Justina listened to the susurrus of the breeze in the leaves and watched the dappled sunlight. The man's easy calm was infectious and it really was a lovely day.

* * *

Elizabeth ran her fingers gently around the edge of the painting feeling for anything unusual. It only took her a couple moments to find two catches, one on the right side and one on the top. When pressed simultaneously they made a quiet click and the paining swung out on well hidden hinges. _See? Wall safe_.

It was an elegant thing, smooth and sleek with barely a hairline crack around the edge. It had two key holes over a keypad in the center. Elizabeth recognized the model. Once the keys were turned she would only have a minute to enter the 6 digit code.

She took a small flashlight and shined it at a steep angle across the keypad then breathed on it's glossy keyes. As the fog from her breath faded she saw the smudge of fingerprints o and 0. Elizabeth nodded and turned her back on the wall safe.

Xanaria was confused but she stayed quiet and watched the master work.

Elizabeth went to the desk. She scanned it carefully. It seemed pretty standard in a sleek, expensive way. It had 3 drawers on the right side, the bottom one tall and firmly locked with an odd little LED over the keyhole, another long drawer over a hole for the chair, and a blotter fancy enough it almost needed one of its own. But peeking out from under the edge of the blotter she spotted a tiny corner of colored paper. Carefully lifting the edge she saw a line of post it notes. They each had long alphanumeric strings on them and were headed by an underlined acronyme. Elizabeth pulled out a tiny digital camera. She took several quick pictures and stowed it away again. She could already tell some of them were the same passwords she had gotten from the computer downstairs; they had merely been shifted by one number or letter. It was barely even a code at all. So when she got to the sticky note that said:

WS:

491735

She easily translated it to: 502846

She nodded and then returned to the wall safe. She had read all about this kind of locking mechanism before. It was designed to be fiddly. When used properly the owner would need to use both hands and turn two identical keys at the same time. If they were even off a little bit then the safe wouldn't unlock. It also wouldn't set off the alarm because it was expected to take a legitimate owner a couple tries to get it right. As soon as the keys were turned properly the keypad would turn on. She would have one minute to enter the code. If she waited past the minute or got the code wrong even once the alarm would go off and the safe lock down.

This meant that she would need to either find the keys, one of which Kriston always carried in his wallet and another she hadn't even found clues about, or she would have to pick two locks, the same way, at the same time, each with only one of her hands.

Elizabeth grinned and stretched out her fingers, _This will be fun. _

It took her four tries before the locks clicked together and the key pad began to glow. She grinned punching in the code and the safe swung open silently.

_~That was awesome.~ _Xanaria thought, impressed.

Elizabeth didn't respond but Xanaria felt her glow with pride.

Inside the safe were several stacks of twenties and 13 keys laid out carefully on a little shelf. Each key had a label with a symbol on it. She assumed they meant something to Kriston but she could likely decipher them given time. She wrapped all but one of them in a long strip of velvet, so that they made a tidy bundle but none of them were touching each other. She tucked the bundle away in one of her many pockets. The key she kept in hand. It's tag had a symbol on it that looked like a drawer, and attached to its head was a small chip and LED that matched to one on the bottom drawer of the desk.

After clearing the safe of money, Elizabeth went back to the desk. The key fit perfectly and the lights flashed green. She left it in the lock and slid open the drawer. It was full of files. The labels were in plain english, presumably because getting through this many layers of security must mean you were supposed to see them. There were too many papers for her to take them all but she slid off her flat backpack and propping it open against the side of the drawer began to go through them. The backpack had been especially designed to hold papers. It could be made larger or cinched down tight to hold them flat against her back and kept them from crinkling or getting in the way. The lining was thin noise reducing foam to keep any rustling sounds as quiet as possible when she was moving. Each time she found an especially incriminating piece of paper, she slid it into her pack. Even so, it was starting to fill up even before she was halfway through the drawer. Many of the papers even had Rupert Kriston's signature on them and that gave Elizabeth a vengeful little thrill each time.

She had just reached a file for a children's cancer charity, where most of the money had gone into the pockets of Kriston and not toward the children at all, when Xanaria heard someone running down the hall. She barely had time to secure and shoulder her backpack when the door slammed open.

* * *

Justina and the man walked into town just as the light was fading from the sky. Once they passed out of the trees and stepped onto the sidewalk Rob seemed to come back to the present a little more.

"The diner's just a couple blocks this way. You can rest to get your bearings there. The courthouse closed at 5 anyway so we just missed them for tonight."

Justina nodded and said something pleasant, grateful, and bland, but her mind was elsewhere. _Where is Xanaria? How am I going to get back? What will I do until tomorrow? _She pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind and tried to focus on where they going.

It was a normal enough town at first glance. A drug store, a couple coffee shops, a gas station. It had trees growing up in little green strips next to the sidewalk and Rob made sure to brush each one with his fingers.

The first time she really noticed anything unusual was when they passed a toy store. There was a music box in the window with a tiny ballerina dancing in it, but it wasn't just spinning through a couple mechanical moves, she was really dancing in fluid graceful motions. Justina watched it as they passed but didn't slow down, or ask about it. She tried not to show in any way that she thought something like that was unusual.

Rob noticed anyway, "Beth really is a brilliant artist, isn't she?"

Justina agreed, whole heartedly. After that she started noticing more and more little things around town. Nothing big or obvious was unusual. There were still stop signs on the intersections, still light bulbs in the streetlights. But some of the signs on specific stores moved or glowed without lightbulbs or passing under them you smelled clean cut grass and expensive chocolate. She smiled thinking about all the other things that could be true in a world like this.

Before long they arrived at a little cheerful looking dinner named Hart's Haven and Hamburgers. It had a glowing white deer leaping over the words on the sign. As they approached, a woman came out of the diner smiling cheerfully. She was tall, broad and graceful. She stepped over the three stairs by the door, saying "Oh good, you found her!" And gave Rob a warm one armed hug pressing her cheek to the top of his head. Then she took Justina's hand and pulled her out of the gathering gloom and into the warm and welcoming diner.

The inside of the diner was just as cheerful as the outside. It smelled of hot sugar and fried potatoes, and she felt her mouth begin to water. Justina heard clapping and was surprised to see there were several people at the long counter who were looking right at her and applauding. She was guided to a seat at the counter with tall spinning chairs that were surprisingly comfortable.

Eleanor gave her a menu and then moved up to the small stage by the window that had a microphone, a stool, and a sturdy music stand. She ignore the microphone, her voice easily filling the room, "Next up on the open mic sign up sheet is John with a new poem but since our rescue has just been brought home," She paused and smiled as a brief flurry of applause filled the diner. "We're going to have a pause until she has a plate of food in front of her. I know you all can't resist learning a newcomer's stories. And telling your old ones to a new and captive audience."

There was a chuckle of the kind made by people who have heard a joke before but still are amused by it. Eleanor made her way back to Justina at the counter where she had quickly been surrounded by curious patrons.

"What would you like, dear?" Eleanor asked "We have 50 bucks or so in the feeding rescues funds so pick anything you want." While she spoke a notepad appeared in her hand as if by magic.

_Maybe it was magic, _Justina thought, _but no, that seems like too mundane a trick for a woman with such an aura of quiet power._

"I do have money," Justina protested, "I can buy my own meal."

"Nonsense this is tradition, you wouldn't mess with tradition would you?"

There was an expectnat hush and Justina smiled, "Okay, well," She scanned the menu quickly, "The eggs Benedict sounds amazing."

"It is." Eleanor made a quick note on her pad. "Anything to drink? Hot tea is a favorite with people coming down out of the woods."

"That does sound good. Um…"

Her hesitation resulted in an instant chorus of cheerful suggestions from the people gathered round.

"Oooh, you should try the earl grey."

"No, it's too late for caffeine, take the apple cinnamon."

"My favorite's lemon ginger."

"She'll pick the apple cinnamon."

"Shh, let her decide."

"Can't go wrong with the white rose rooibos"

"Peppermint! Peppermint!"

Laughing a little Justina held up a hand and they settled down. "Wow, thank you, those all sound good. I'll think I'll take the apple cinnamon tea. Thank you"

"And your dessert? You have to pick a dessert."

"Eleanor's pecan pies are the best in the state."

"The triple chocolate caramel fudge cake is to die for."

"She would love the blueberry crumble, but she won't pick it."

"The tiramisu just came out of the oven!"

"Apple pie is a classic."

"The cheesecake here is my favorite."

"Guys guys! Give her a chance to choose."

They all looked at her expectantly, "Well, I'm not sure I would be human if I turned down triple chocolate caramel fudge cake."

"Wonderful!" Eleanor smiled at her closing the notepad, "Don't let these guys scare you off before I get back!"

With that she disappeared into the back of the diner, and the patrons closed around Justina excitedly asking eager questions. Luckily, she found that they were just as happy to tell her about themselves as they were to ask about her, and she deflected easily.

Justina found herself fascinated by the casual way magic wove through these people's lives and yet didn't affect their human nature. She lost track of time and wasn't expecting it when a plate of perfect eggs benedict, with a generous helping of hollandaise sauce, was placed in front of her.

* * *

Elizabeth didn't waste time. She crashed through the window just as the first gunshots rang out. She felt bright hot pain light up her left arm, and she didn't know if it was from the glass or the gun.

_~Oh, Sleeping Goddess! What is it with my friends and trying to jump out of upper story windows!~_

_Shut up. It's not that far._

They didn't have to go all the way down, luckily. Elizabeth knew from her pre-mission research that the window right below them had a gable above a protruding window seat. She landed poorly, thrown off by the pain in her arm, and rolled over the edge. She barely snagged the gutter on her way down. Her left arm refused to hold on and she hung by one hand as she heard shouting from the room she had just left. The gutter squealed and twisted under her weight. She pushed off hard from the angled glass side of the gable's window seat just as she felt it give way and lept to another gable one floor down. Landing much better this time she caught her balance and barely hesitated before jumping again to the next one down. Then to a decorative cherry tree. She edged around to the far side of the tree and, hoping the thick flexible rubber soles of her boots would protect her, she jumped for the high electric fence pushing off it and onto a pine tree on the other side.

She felt all the hair on her body try to stand up and heard the terrifying buzzing crackle of the fence beneath her, but her boots held up and she made it unscorched to the tree on the far side. She half slid, half fell down the tree and took a moment at the bottom to finally look at her wound.

It was worse than she hoped but better than she had feared. Something had torn a chunk out of her upper arm and it was bleeding continuously in a steady drip. It had clearly missed anything serious, but she must have left a trail of blood all the way down the building.

_Shit. Shit shit shit! _Elizabeth pulled a roll of thick gauze from a deep pocket and began quickly and efficiently wrapping up her arm._ Oh, damn it, do you know what some Blood Charmers can do with blood?_

_~No. But I assume it's bad.~_

_I'm screwed. Some of them can track you and that sucks, but some of the darker ones can use it to boil you alive or freeze you in place or pull the rest of your blood to them. Everyone's charm is unique of course, even if they can be similar, but you can bet Kriston will find the worst of the worst even if he has to buy a whole jail to get them here. I can't leave it. Which means I have to use my charm. But then my charm print will be all over this place and I'm caught._

_~At least you'll be alive, those other options sound horrible!~_

_Shit._

Elizabeth finished with her arm and put away the gauze. She shook out her good hand and dipped two fingers into the small puddle of blood she had left on the ground. Elizabeth reached deep and then let her charm roll up and out, back up the building. She felt a slight stinging sensation as the blood already drying and glueing the fabric to her arm vanished from existence, along with the puddle she had been touching and the streak she had left on the tree.

_And now they will know I'm a Cleaner. Even before they get a forensic team out here to memorize my charm print, they'll be visiting all the Cleaners in town to try and recover what I've taken. _She turned and began to run through the forest. _I can't go home._

_~Where will you run?~_

_I have a couple ideas. In the meantime I know someone who will help me no matter what, although I'd rather not impose on her and her fiance, unless I absolutely have to. First things first, though. These papers have to make it into the FBI's hands. Otherwise this will all have been for nothing._


	6. In Which Justina Learns the Future and E

**In Which Justina Learns the Future and Elizabeth Has to Make the Hardest Goodbye**

* * *

Justina's meal was amazing. And when the open mic started up again John's poetry was… heartfelt. And in this place that was enough.

After his performance there was a five minute break during which everyone chatted and milled around. They settled again when Eleanor approached the stage, almost entirely at different tables from the ones they'd started at. Eleanor announced the next performer, a woman named Maggie who demonstrated some of her favorite wrestling moves in energetic pantomime. Then another five minute break. Then up came a teenage girl wearing worn through jeans and a mud stained coat a couple sizes too big for her. She sang beautifully in a light clear soprano and got a cheerful round of applause. When she left the stage Eleanor brought her a large steaming mug of hot chocolate and a blanket.

During the next break Justina turned to Rob. "This place is more than it seems, isn't it?"

He gave her a crooked grin "That's true of most things."

"Yes, but this is amazing, theres so much love here. 'Haven' wasn't just picked for the alliterative sound, was it?"

His smile widened at the compliment. "No it wasn't. Neither was the mention of the Hart. This place has a magic so much deeper than anyone's charms. It's Eleanor's heart and soul laid open to embrace the world."

"What are the rules?"

"Excuse me?"

"How does it work? It's clearly well organized, despite the chaos. I want to understand."

"The city wouldn't let her open a shelter or a food kitchen, but she already basically runs this place and a lot of people are happy to donate a little money here and there for small things. Especially fun things. So she started the open mic night. If you read, or sing, or share something, you get a cup of tea or coffee. And using the logic that you need an audience to have a performance, anyone can stay as long as they want, whether they participate or not. Eleanor has a box of donated blankets too for anyone who needs a nap. The back booths are set aside for them. A couple of Cleaners volunteer their charms if there are any big messes on or off stage. Although even Cleaners struggle with glitter. It started out once a week, then two times a week, and now it's every night.

"People tried to tell her it would go badly. Warned her that people will always take advantage. I don't think they realized that kindness is not the same as weakness. They had never seen what it looks like if her protectiveness turns against you. The first time she caught a customer touching a waitress inappropriately she threw him out on his ass in the snow. When he complained, she threw his designer coat after him and his half finished meal on top of it. She is no pushover."

His smile got a little misty as he watched Eleanor navigating the crowd on the other side of the room. "She is fierce, but forgiving. She believes in second chances as long as you can show that you'll change your behavior. She gathers good people to her like peas to a window, and we all come out better for having known her.

"Sometimes the donations haven't been enough to cover the costs, but she'll gladly cover that from her own pocket. Amazingly, it's never been too much for her to handle. It's brilliant and it works, but it takes a special kind of person to keep it going."

"That's amazing, this is amazing!"

"Maybe you'll start one of your own when you get home."

"I might. I'd love too. But... I'm not entirely sure that I can go home. Not really."

"Oh?"

"I… would rather not talk about it."

"Fair enough. Plenty of people here have things they don't want to dwell on."

She nodded gratefully, and sipped her tea.

The next person brought up a watercolor painting he had made with coins and buttons glued over the top. It was pretty. He talked about it for a couple minutes and then rejoined his friends, where he was congratulated. There was another five minute break and Justina took the opportunity to visit the bathroom.

When she was done Justina washed her hands carefully. In the silence she wondered again about Xanaria. She heard someone come out of one of the stalls behind her. She looked up and met eyes in the mirror with a solemn dark eyed young woman. Justina smiled at her, but the woman didn't smile back, she just began washing her hands at the sink next to Justina's.

When Justina turned off the water the woman said abruptly, "You don't belong here."

"What?" Everyone had been so welcoming all night it surprised her. She felt a little worm of fear crawl around inside her stomach.

_Stop that. _She told herself, _Even if she knows how I got here, No one would believe her. And if they did what difference would that make?_

Justina hedged. "Of course not, that's why I got found and brought here."

The woman looked at her surprised. "You listened."

"What?"

"You heard me without dismissing me. I... Even people who know me have trouble listening when I talk about things that I shouldn't know."

"What?"

"My charm. It lets me know things I can't know and ensures no one will ever believe me."

"That sounds frustrating."

She shrugged. "It can be. Mostly it's just how life is. If I'm not trying to talk about things my charm revealed to me then everything is normal. I'm called Cassi by the way, as in Cassandra. That's not my name, but I go by it."

"As in the prophet no one believed, I get that. So that's how you guessed I'd pick the apple cinnamon tea, and that's why you were the only one told to 'hush.'"

Cassi stared at Justina, forgetting the water still running in her sink.

"Yes. I... You heard me?"

"Well, yeah."

"But you don't have a charm that lets you know truth from lies. The only other person…. But… but you don't. You don't have a charm at all. You come from a world without any magic in it. Your land is hollow and all that matters is what you can make with your hands and who can take it from you."

"Well, that's a little harsh."

"But it's not wrong."

"I... suppose not."

Cassi bit her lip. "You know, I wasn't going to say anything but if you'll actually listen, it would be nice to be believed. But it's not... I don't know if it's good news but I do not think it is."

Justina didn't know what to say to that. In the silence Cassi turned off the sink and took a deep breath before turning back to Justina, her expression grave and her dark eyes impossible to look away from.

"Your husband isn't back in your home metaverse. His body has died, but he's not exactly dead, and he can get it back. He is out here, helping, and he is sorely needed."

Justina felt her knees go weak and she grabbed the sink to keep from sitting on the floor. But Cassi wasn't done.

"If you find him he will be different. Changed in ways I do not understand."

"It doesn't matter." Justina whispered. "I'll find him anyway."

"If you try it will take a lot of time, a lot of work, and a lot of luck."

"What do you mean if? Can't you see the future?"

"Some things are clear, some things are not." Cassi shrugged a little helplessly.

"Wait, do you know where he is right now? Can you tell me how to find him?"

"I'm sorry, I don't see everything just… bits and pieces. The strongest pieces are the loudest, but you have three really strong ones and it's hard to pick up more than a handful of less certain and less imminent futures. So many things affect what makes some futures stronger than others. I can't even figure it all out. Although I didn't think it would interest you to know you will be woken well before dawn by someone you both know and don't know. Or that drinking something called a Blitz is a bad idea."

Reeling, Justina tried to think through her thousands of questions but her brain didn't seem to be working. She blurted out, "I'm not afraid of hard work."

"I know. But I also know that it will cause you a lot of pain." Cassi smiled sadly. "I probably shouldn't have brought it up. I can't change anything. I don't even know if my charm extends properly beyond my own world. But… thank you for listening."

Cassi ducked her head and left quickly. Justina stared into the sink until she felt she could walk without wobbling and then followed her out.

* * *

Elizabeth scaled the side of an ordinary looking house with ease, despite her damaged arm. They reached the roof and Elizabeth slipped around to the back of the house where there was a gable window. There was a faint light on inside that dimmed and brightened but there was no sound. _He probably fell asleep rewatching an old cop show, he enjoys laughing at everything they get wrong._

_~Then how will we get in?~_

_Getting in is easy. It's making sure he doesn't smash the window and wake his landlord that's tricky._

Elizabeth pulled her notebook from an easy to reach pocket and drew a shaky frog on one page as big as she could. Then, carefully and quietly, she taped it to the middle of the window. Moving away she scooped a few pine cones from the gutter. With a careful underhand, she tossed one hitting the top of the gable with an audible thump. Then she threw another two in quick succession at the same spot. There was swearing from inside the room and the sound of a gun being cocked. Then there was a pause. They heard the gun being put away and the window opened. A hand pulled off the drawing. A head popped out, unshaven, hair a mess, but still surprisingly handsome under that. At least to Elizabeth.

_~Oh, no. I don't want to be here for that.~_

_Shut up. No one asked you to be here at all. And besides nothing will ever happen._

_~Sure…~_

_Shut up._

"Liz?" He asked, looking around, "That had better be you."

_~You're okay with him calling you Liz?~_

_I love being Liz to him, it's Betty that I hate. Everyone thinks Betty's the perfect nickname for a house cleaner._

"Yeah, Jack, it's me." At the sound of her voice he looked toward her but it wasn't until she began to move closer that his eyes found her.

"Damn, it's creepy how you do that." He stepped back from the window letting her slip inside.

The room was large and open, but it made for a small apartment. There was a dresser and a rolling hanger rack set up to screen the bed from the window. On the right was an area with a linoleum floor that held a small refrigerator, compact stove, sink, and a short counter that clearly doubled as a table. There was also a desk looking out over the whole room and two doors. Xanaria remembered with Elizabeth's memories that one went downstairs to the main floor, where his landlord lived, and the other went to a spacious bathroom.

"And what's with this?" He asked once she was inside. "You drew better frogs when we were in kindergarten."

"Give me a break, I'm not working under ideal circumstances right now." She rolled her left shoulder gently, bringing his attention to the bandage on her arm.

Concerned he reached out. "Let me take a look at that. Did you even remember to sterilize it?"

But when she jerked back he pulled up short and dropped his hand, a little hurt.

"I can't leave blood here for DNA evidence, and I can't use my charm because I had to use it back at the alleged crime scene. You can't use your Healing on me because if they catch me and your charm print still lingers they'll use it to bring you down too. I wont risk that."

He smiled reaching out to her again. "Come on Liz, you're the one who taught me that not everything you do has to be about what your charm is. I do this for a living, I know exactly how crime scenes work and how they don't. I know how to clean up any evidence of blood without using charms."

"If you're sure," She said, "but first things first."

She began pulling papers out of her backpack and various places around her person.

"These," She told him, "Should be enough to get at least Rupert Kriston put away for a long time."

He stared at them open mouthed. "I don't want to know how you got them, do I?"

"If you don't know they can't make you testify in front of a truthsayer."

"True enough."

"Confidential informant line still holding up?"

"Everyone in the department suspects something is up, but the captain's still an honest man so he keeps the sell outs off my back."

"Well, I'm afraid this will be the last one for a while."

He looked at her long and hard. "I'm not sure it was worth it."

"Don't be stupid. This is the Kristons. Of course it's worth it."

"You are worth way more than any bust."

There was a long quiet moment as they looked at each other.

~_Ummm…~_

_Shut up._

Elizabeth looked away first, her face warm.

Jack cleared his throat. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

He guided her to the bathroom and sat her down in the tub. He pulled on a pair of exam gloves and laid out what he would need on a tray, balancing it on the toilet seat. Carefully he unwound the bandage and winced when he saw what was underneath. "Seriously? You didn't even put down a pad to keep your shirt from sticking to the wound? I'm going to have to cut off your sleeve to get at this properly."

"Please don't. I need it. It took a long time to get my work clothes right. Here." And before he could stop her she slipped her shirt over her head and tugged the cloth free of her arm.

"Don't-" he began but it was too late, the dried and clotting blood pulled away with the shirt and the bullet wound began bleeding freely again.

"Shit." She dropped the shirt behind her in the bathtub, and pressed her palm to her wound trying to stop the bleeding. Jack gently pulled her hand away and pressed a thick pad of gauze to her arm.

"I could have loosened it with water. Seriously, let me do my job."

"Your job is catching people like me."

"Well, yeah. But let me do the other part of my job. The uncredited field medic part."

"I never understood why you bothered to learn all this when you can just charm people better." Elizabeth tried to ignore what was happening on her arm as he cleaned the wound with quick gentle fingers.

"Sometimes you can't use charms, but you're still expected to fill the role you were brought along for. Besides, I see so much pain and damage it's nice to know that I can fix people too."

She hissed through her teeth as he gently applied a disinfectant gel.

"You remember Mittens?" He asked, clearly trying to distract her.

"Of course I remember our cat."

"You wrote me once that you were having trouble getting him not to try and climb up to my apartment after my family moved, but you never told me what happened to him."

"Well, he kept going looking for you right up until the new renters moved in. The girl who took your room chased him out with an air horn. She said she was allergic. After that he never went back but I would often catch him staring up the building toward your window for the rest of his life."

"I'm sorry."

"Nothing you could do about it. You were nine, and no one I know can talk to cats, so it wasn't like we could have explained things to him."

"Yeah, I suppose. How did he go?"

"Old age basically. He slowed down until he wasn't happy existing anymore and then Mom and Dad let him go. I was sixteen by then so I understood. I made sure his last day was a good one."

"That was kind of you."

"It was the least I could do. And it was a much better end than it could have been."

"That's true. Alright, you're set." He hooked on a little plastic bandage clip to hold the new wrapping in place.

"Huh," Elizabeth moved her arm around testing the mobility. "Nice."

"I assume you won't take any painkillers right now, so I applied a slight numbing agent. It likely won't last long, but hopefully it will help you do whatever you need to do next."

"Thank you. I can't be getting fuzzy headed right now. I have a lot to do before I'm safe."

"Ah, your pants are all over blood now too. Umm… Here. If you insist on keeping these clothes I'll get you a gallon ziplock bag for them and you can borrow some of my clothes until you find something better. Make sure anything with even a little blood on it stays in the bathtub. Here's a towel to clean the rest of it off. You can run the faucet on low to wet the towel, but don't get the bandage wet and don't run the shower, it splashes."

"Thank you." She told him. He looked away and nodded, then slipped out of the room.

She cleaned up as carefully as she could. It didn't take long. She didn't bother to try and clean her underthings. They weren't too bloody, all things considered, and it was just way too awkward to take them off. She considered wrapping herself in the towel, but it was a damp and bloody mess by the time she was done, so she just dropped it in the bathtub. When Jack knocked on the door she pulled the curtain. She wished it wasn't transparent, but at least it was something.

"I have some things I think will work. Um, are you decent?"

"Ah, not really, but I won't be until you give me something to wear, so... you might as well come in."

_Shut. Up._

_~I didn't say anything.~_

There was a palpable pause from the other side of the door, then it opened. He avoided looking at her as he passed her a shirt and pant's of his own. "I know they won't fit well but it's the best I could find."

"Thank you." She reached around to take them but he wasn't finished.

"Wipe your feet down first, then put on the socks and step out without putting them down inside the tub. I can and will be washing the bath mat with bleach but it's still better to minimize the risk. And when you put your clothes in the bag try to keep anything from touching the outside."

He left the bathroom again quickly. She hopped awkwardly on one foot at a time as she followed his instructions, and then pulled on the shirt and pants. The t-shirt was soft and a little baggy, but mens medium fits everybody well enough. The pants were too big. She rolled up the cuffs to a good length but the waist kept threatening to slip down. She left the bathroom holding them up with one hand.

"Do you have a piece of rope I could use?"

He looked at her, confused.

"Ah, for the pants." She clarified. "I don't want to deprive you of a belt, but these won't quite stay up."

"Oh, yeah." He crossed the room and dug through one of his drawers.

Elizabeth sat down cross legged in the center of his apartment and took the opportunity to tuck the gallon ziplock with her bloody things into her backpack.

"Here," he pulled out a thin greenish brown woven belt that shimmered glossily. "I hate this thing, but my niece gave it to me. Burn it before you bring it back."

She grinned at him a little sadly. They both knew she wouldn't be bringing anything back.

_~It's kind of now or never, isn't it?~_

_Please stop talking._

Jack cleared his throat, seeming to realize they had been staring at each other for awhile now.

"There's one other thing." He ducked down and dragged a package from under his bed, "This was going to be your birthday present but, well." He held it out.

Curious she took it, and carefully peeled off the tape so she could remove the gold and green leaf patterned wrapping paper all in one piece. He watched her with an amused half smile.

When she saw what was inside she gasped. She held a beautiful and clearly high quality coat. It was elegantly cut in a simple olive green and the lining where it turned out at the collar and cuffs was a deep blue with a detailed pattern of white constellations. When she pulled it on it came to her knees and fit like it had been tailored to her. It was perfect.

"Oh, thank you. I… thank you." And without thinking she took two quick steps forward and hugged him like she hadn't since they were nine years old. He hugged her back, hiding his face in her hair. Xanaria slid further back into Elizabeth's mind, trying to give them some privacy. After a long moment Elizabeth felt his breath catch, she pulled away just far enough so she could look him in the face. Then it was only a couple inches to kiss him, like she had wanted since they had been reunited in college.

* * *

As the night wore on Justina found herself beginning to yawn. She wasn't the only one. Around 11 o'clock people began trickling out or borrowing blankets and heading toward the back. The open mic continued but with fewer people stepping up the breaks got longer. Justina watched lost in thought. When people approached her she'd talk them, but as the crowd thinned fewer people did.

She had just been hit by a huge yawn, when opening her eyes she saw Eleanor leaning on the bar across from her.

"Oh!" Justina jerked upright.

"Sorry, dear I didn't mean to startle you. How are you doing?"

"Good. Just starting to get a little sleepy. I wasn't yawing at her I promise." Justina gestured at the stage were an older woman was belly dancing.

"Oh, I know you weren't. She's a regular, but she prefers to go later because she is a little shy." Eleanor chuckled. "Don't tell her I told you."

"Are you here every night? That doesn't sound healthy even if you love what your doing."

"Well, no, not every night. I have three people who I trust to keep this place running smoothly when I have to be gone. One of them will be coming in at midnight to take over."

"Oh good, I'd hate to think of you getting burnt out after creating such a brilliant and friendly place."

Eleanor smiled at her warmly. "Cassi was right. I can't believe I'm still surprised even when I know how her charm works. I try to trust her judgment, but charms will be charming." She said the last bit with the cadence of an old saying.

Justina smiled at her. "She seems like a kind person, if a little isolated. Unsettling, I'll admit, but well meaning."

"She is at that." Eleanor sighed, "I tried to get her a friend. I know someone whose charm tells her when she is and isn't being lied to. But then they developed a mutual crush and they're both painfully shy so I have to start all over again to get them talking."

"Oof. Well, I wish you luck, getting people talking is the worst. My husband never seemed to want to…" she trailed off realizing she had used the past tense. "I mean doesn't. He doesn't communicate well."

"Oh, I see." Eleanor's expression turned a little sad.

"He's not.. He's not dead. Well, he might be but Cassi said he isn't really and… it's complicated."

"That sounds confusing."

Justina nodded and sighed.

"Well, I could get you a blanket if you want to spend the night here, but if you would be more comfortable me and Rob have a spare couch you could borrow for tonight. We don't usually offer, but Cassi urged me to consider it."

"Would Rob be okay with that?"

"Oh yes, he said it sounded like a good idea. He likes you, you must have been very nice about his garden."

"His garden?"

"Or something else he loves."

"Ah, yes. I suppose I was."

"So would you prefer that? We'll leave at midnight, so if you would rather just borrow a blanket and claim a booth, I can get you something."

Justina looked around the diner, which still had some people chatting quietly and eating food. "This place is lovely but I think I would prefer the couch. Thank you."

* * *

It was a long kiss, but it hadn't been long enough for either of them when Jack's cell phone rang. He ignored it, letting it go to voicemail, but when it rang again Elizabeth pulled away.

"It's probably important." She said a little sadly.

He looked conflicted but when she pushed him toward it he went. He sighed when he looked at the screen.

"It's work." He confirmed, and answered it. "Yes sir?... It's one forty fi... Yes of course… Not long… Alright…" There was a long pause as he just listened, then, "Wow…. Yes, I may have acquired some information that could help…. twenty minutes, sir… Yes, I do, I was asleep and I don't feel it would be wise to arrive at an emergency meeting this underdressed…. Yes sir. See you soon." He hung up and looked at her with a sad smile.

"Time to escape?" She asked, knowing the answer.

He nodded. "Where will you- no, don't tell me."

"I wouldn't be able to anyway, I haven't got the slightest idea yet."

She scooped up her backpack from the floor and adjusted the straps over her new coat. He carefully packed the papers she had brought him in a briefcase, and locked it. She moved to the window and swung her legs out. He caught her arm before she was all the way gone.

"Wait, if… If this gets me a promotion I'll get sent to a different town, probably somewhere bigger. If it doesn't... Well, if it doesn't I'll put in for a transfer. If… maybe you could…" He trailed off, unable to ask her what he wanted. And she couldn't answer, because he would likely be going in front of a truthsayer over this at some point and they both knew the only safety was if they didn't know.

She smiled sadly, and pulled him down for one more brief kiss. "We'll have to see how life goes, I guess. Thank you for telling me. I… Thank you. For everything."

Blinking furiously to keep the tears from blurring her vision, she disappeared into the night.

_I will find him again. I will._


	7. In Which Xanaria Finds Justina but Has a

**In Which Xanaria Finds Justina but Has a Different Face**

* * *

Eleanor's living room was a soft, friendly, and functional place. Justina fell asleep quickly. Upstairs Rob and Eleanor were soon sleeping cheerfully as well. The night passed quietly until a little after 2am when the living room window softly slid open.

Justina came wide awake when she heard the small click of the shutter latch and the rasp of the window opening. She stared wide eyed at the figure faintly silhouetted against the moonlit clouds, and squeaked unintentionally. The figure quickly dropped to the ground and out of sight.

"Um, sorry. Eleanor? I didn't think there would be anyone here."

"No, Eleanor's upstairs she just let me sleep on her couch for tonight."

"Wait. Justina?!" The voice changed, taking on a familiar cadence, even though the pitch was still different.

A light clicked on and Justina squinted against it, her brain still not fully functional. "Um, Xanaria? You sound different." She blinked bringing the woman approaching the couch into focus. "You look different too. What's going on?"

"When I used the Metastone I found myself in Elizabeth here instead of in you. It's… been a long night."

"Okay, first of all that phrasing could have been better. Second, I'm glad you're okay but what are you doing here?"

"I'm here," her voice eased back into the sharper accent she'd had when she came in, "because I need to see Eleanor and ask for help."

"You know I will always help you." Eleanor was at the door, a warm smile on her face. "What do you need, Elizabeth?"

Elizabeth smiled back, sadly. "An exit strategy that doesn't leave my friends to pick up all the pieces."

"Oh. Finally went a step too far?"

Elizabeth nodded. "I got shot and had to Clean up the blood. If I stay they'll come round to all of us to check our charmprints and I'll be caught. If I go I'll be the only one unaccounted for and I'll be hunted forever. Even if I fake my death they wouldn't let it go without a body. This case is just too big."

Eleanor nodded seriously. "Okay. I'll make a pot of tea. We'll think about this. I see you've been to see Jack already. He gave you your present early."

Elizabeth smiled sadly and ran a finger around the cuff of her perfect coat. "Yes. We already said goodbye."

Eleanor smiled knowingly but let the subject go. Instead, she filled the electric kettle saying, "I'll make tea, and you can tell me what happened."

"Well, Jack told me about how the Kriston's were involved in that drug dealing ring they found in the high school last month, but since there wasn't any concrete evidence to nail them with, they were going to get away with it."

"That boy is more reckless than he has any right to be. He shouldn't have sent you into such a dangerous situation."

"He didn't! He was just complaining, I was the one who decided to do something about it."

"Mm-hmm." Eleanor brought out mugs and boxes of tea, her mouth pressed in a worried line.

Elizabeth waved her off, "So I decided someone needed to get that evidence, and if it meant taking a shit load of cash away from the Kristons at the same time it would just be a win all around."

"So what happened?"

"I got shot."

"You mentioned, but how did you get caught in the first place?"

"I'm still not sure, we- I must have tripped something when I was going through the filing cabinets."

"We?" Eleanor looked confused. "But you always work alone."

"Yes, and I did but also… I'm not sure how to describe it. I got a piggybacker in my head, she stayed out of the way except to warn me when she heard something impossibly quiet. She's the only reason I'm not dead. She warned me when the guards were coming and I had time to get out the window. Still got shot though."

"Xanaria is good at that." Justina put in. The other two looked at her surprised and Justina shrugged. "She's what's called a pilot. I know because she was supposed to be in my head. We came looking for food." They kept staring at her and nervously she just kept talking. "We're not from here, okay? We didn't mean to get all tangled up in your stuff, we were just going to stop in here and visit a grocery store or something-"

Elizabeth held up a hand. "It's okay. I'm glad things came out the way they did. She helped."

Eleanor looked confused, "I would very much like to hear the rest of that explanation.

"I don't think I have time for that Eleanor," Elizabeth sighed, "but really I don't think she knows much more than she already said. Xanaria seems pretty vague about it too. Just accept it and move on for now. Maybe we'll learn more someday."

Eleanor sat back and nodded, but she didn't look content.

"You could talk to Cassi." Justina put in. "If you can get yourself to believe her she knows more about all this than I do, I think."

Eleanor nodded slowly, "I'll see if I can give that a shot."

"In the meantime," Elizabeth put in, "I'm all out of plans. Does anyone else have any ideas?"

The kettle boiled and Eleanor busied herself filling mugs. "Hmm. And you're sure you need to go? We'll miss you around here."

"My charm print is all over this town, for all it's mixed up with the other members of my cleaning crew. I don't want them harassed either." She took her mug of tea. "Thank you."

"At least you know none of them will go down for it."

"How do you figure?"

"Kriston. He doesn't care about them and he won't let anyone try to settle things without something as simple as a matching charm print. Even if he goes straight to illegal methods of tracking you down, he won't care enough about anyone else to harm them permanently."

"I suppose. Still, I'd rather not risk them if it can be avoided."

"What if we have you die? Make it look like your gunshot wound was too much and you fell in the river or something."

"Without a body Kriston would never believe it. He could hire anyone he wants, and we may be good but we are not that good."

"What if you change professions?" Justina asked. "Never use your charm again?"

"I'm still registered as having a cleaning charm, they'll bring us all to the police station to get printed, and refusing will be almost as good as a confession. Not for the police, but for Kriston. And he would be right."

"You could become a hermit and never resurface in society again." Eleanor said, trying to lighten the mood.

"Still. I'd be found."

"I wasn't serious."

"I know, but I had thought about it. I need something that convinces them that I'm gone for good, and at the same time that I didn't do it. Otherwise I might as well just turn myself in now."

"What if I take the blame?" Justina asked suddenly.

"What?" Eleanor asked, just as Elizabeth said, "No!"

"I'm going to be gone soon anyway and it's very unlikely I'll ever be back. So lets frame me for it. No one knows what my charm is. Maybe it's cleaning."

"But-" Elizabeth began, before Justina cut her off.

"Then if anyone asks Eleanor about me she can honestly say I said I was a cleaner, Okay?"

"Oh, yeah. Okay."

"But you haven't been all over town. There's no reason for your charm print to be everywhere." Eleanor put in.

"So we'll make a reason. It sounds like your a pretty good thief. How many of the houses you've cleaned in that last month or so do you think you could break into in the next," She glanced at the wall clock. "Oh, 3 hours or so?" She frowned and looked at her watch.

"Quite a few but I don't want to. They are, for the most part, good people."

"I'm not saying actually rob them," Justina said as she began adjusting her watch to the local time. "Just make it obvious someone broke in and maybe Clean something small. If you don't want them to panic you could make the pantry obviously ruffled through and maybe take a can of food or two? That's why I came here in the first place. Food. Nothing that they need or love, just something to make it seem like a rash of crimes that happened all at once and not an isolated thing that may have been going on for years. Make it more likely they'll be looking for a stranger who just showed up instead of someone who lives here."

"I still would get caught the next time I used my charm."

"Well, of course you'll still have to flee. But this way at least they won't be following you. You can fake your death with impunity. Just make sure the next identity you use doesn't use her charm for work. I don't know how widespread your charm print database is, but you don't want to go borrowing trouble."

'You've been at the diner all night. What if they find the people who were there and find out you couldn't have been the one at the Kriston's Mansion."

Eleanor put a hand on her arm with a sad smile. "I love the people who come to my diner, Elizabeth, but we both know the police don't consider them reliable."

"I… guess it's a good plan. But I don't like letting you take the fall for me."

"Please. I'll be gone soon anyway. And it sounds like you were doing important work."

"If you're sure."

"I am. Does this town have any stores that sell food in the middle of the night?"

"Yeah, the gas station is open all night and the grocery store opens at 6am, why?"

"I think we'll need more than just a can or two from a couple houses. And it will help connect the crimes to me if I use the last of my money to buy as much food as I can."

Elizabeth pulled a stack of twenties out of nowhere and tossed it on the table in front of Justina. "I just robbed the richest crooked bastard in this town. If we're pinning this on you, then you had better use his money."

Justina nodded, quietly. She wanted to protest out of habit, but it made sense.

"It'll raise red flags, though. Spending his money should be the last thing you do before you skip town."

"How will you carry it all?" Xanaria asked.

"Uh, I'm not sure. Do you think I could steal a shopping cart or something?"

"You wouldn't get far that way." Eleanor told her.

"I don't need to get far. Just to that clearing where Rob found me."

"Hmm. Still, I wouldn't want to be trying to outrun pursuit pushing a heavy shopping cart up that path." Eleanor took a sip of tea and tapped her lips thoughtfully. "I suppose it wouldn't make much sense, in this scenario, if I let you stay here and you didn't steal anything from me. I have an old bike and bike cart in the shed that I haven't used in years. Can you ride a bike?"

Justina grinned, "Oh, yes. I can absolutely ride a bike."

* * *

_I don't like this._ Elizabeth grumbled, stepping over a doll stroller to pick the lock on the back door, barely breaking stride.

_~Me neither.~_ Xanaria sighed. The door opened directly into a spacious and cluttered kitchen with wide windows covered in children's dry erase art.

She crossed silently to the pantry and carefully plucked out a can of Ravioli and one of black beans.

~_If it's going to be worth it, you have to be more obvious.~_

Elizabeth grumbled silently but she pushed the rest of the cans back and laid some on their sides so it would look like she taken more than she had. She left the door open and then found an empty bit of linoleum. She used her water bottle to splash some water across it, then she dipped two fingers in the puddle and with a moments concentration the floor was dry again.

_I hate this._

_~What if some of that money in your pocket got lost in the couch cushions?~_

Elizabeth grinned_, Hey, yeah. That would make me feel a little better._

_~Not too much though. They need to really think they might have lost it themselves.~_

_Yeah, okay._

Two quiet minutes later and three crumpled twenties were stashed under various furniture cushions. She slipped out the back door. She paused..

_Look, I'll leave it unlocked but I'm not leaving it open. Wild animals could get in, and Belle is terrified of raccoons._

_~I don't think leaving it open in necessary. You left the pantry open and that's what counts. All right. Nine more to go?~_

_I still don't like this._

_~I know.~_

* * *

The grocery clerk was confused but kind and gave Justina case discounts on each box of canned food she sent down the conveyor belt.

"Uh, paper or plastic?" He asked, daunted.

"Don't worry about it." She told him cheerfully, "I'll bring the cart back once I've unloaded."

It was still dark outside so the clerk helped her load up the bike cart. It took a few minutes but they made it all fit. Justina had to stand on the bike and put all her weight on one of the pedals, but it began to move. It groaned a little distressingly as it rolled forward. Picking up momentum, she headed down the road and out of town. She was sweating by the time she reached the turn off for the trail.

She was glad the trail was wide but it was still bumpy and even the slight incline was hell with such a heavy load. By the time she reached the clearing the sky was getting bright. Elizabeth was waiting for her there, the crime scene for her death already set up. The grass was torn and scuffed to make it look like there had been a struggle. There was a book whose spine was torn lying on one side of the clearing. Next to a kicked over bag with Elizabeth's name on it. There was a sleeve ripped from a shirt and some torn out chunks of hair.

"The book's to explain why you were up here?

"One of my favorites." Elizabeth said sadly.

"Some blood might help sell a murder."

"I'm not leaving blood here. You don't know what people can do with that. And there's a river another quarter mile up the track. I'll throw the shirt this sleeve is from and the rest of an outfit in there. Those have blood stains on them. A couple hours in the water will keep them from using it against me. And… I have a couple other preparations to make too. Make sure you park the bike and cart right here. Make it look like you loaded the body in there. The tire marks don't show up well on the packed dirt of the path so you can have Skipper pick you up from over there." Elizabeth pointed, "I don't think it will be a problem based on what they said."

Justina couldn't tell which of them had said that. It was a little odd to see from the outside but she knew how closely they must be working together. Justina felt a little stab of jealousy, even though she knew it was silly. She just nodded, and did as she was told.

There was a long moment with Elizabeth looking quiet and introspective, and Justina looked away knowing they were having a private conversation.

"Alright. I guess it's time." Xanaria said, as much for Justina's sake as for Elizabeth's. Justina looked up. Elizabeth smiled, then blinked as something about her changed. Then she nodded.

"Alright." She said, entirely Elizabeth once more, "It was nice meeting you two. Good luck."

"You too." Justina told her as they began to hear sirens quietly in the distance. "You had better go, Skipper will pick me up whenever they pick me up. Good luck, uh, Jane?"

"Thank you, good luck to you too. I think I'll like being Jane." Elizabeth smiled and passed her a heavy bag with the food she had stolen before she disappeared down yet another path Justina hadn't noticed. She idly wondered just how many there were off this clearing as the sirens got louder. And then she saw a hole open in the air and she road through it. She spun gently sideways, inward, diagonally, and upside down. And then the light peeled away and the bikes wheels were sinking deep into moss and she was looking into the familiar upside down grin of Skipper.


	8. In Which Justina Begs for a Favor and Ge

**In Which Justina Begs for a Favor and Gets in a Fight**

* * *

Justina waited almost 17 hours, before she asked Skipper for a favor. She waited until after all the food had been sorted and stored. She waited until Xanaria had told Skipper her whole adventure, complete with dramatic hand gestures and demonstrations that involved climbing vines and then jumping off of them. She waited until after they'd had a good night's sleep. She was planning on waiting a while longer, but Skipper found her in a free moment and it all came out.

"What's wrong?" They asked as she was heating up a can of chili on the electric range.

"What do you mean?" Justina glanced over at where Xanaria was doing laundry.

"You've had something weighing on you since you got back. What's wrong?"

Justina hesitated but then decided to just jump right into it. "There was a woman in that world who knew things about the future. She told me that Tom-Thomas was out here somewhere. And I was hoping, since you can navigate, maybe you could find him? If you feel well enough."  
Skipper cocked their head looking confused. "How would I do that? I mean, yes sometimes travelers leave traces, but I wouldn't know what to follow. I've never met your husband. And even if I had, it would take a lot of luck to pick up on his, what's that metaphor? His, ah, breadcrumbs."

"But could you try? Please?"

"I don't know anything about him. How could I distinguish his trail from any of the others coming off your metaverse for the last 15,000 years?"

"I could tell you about him."

Skipper smoothed down their ears looking confused. "How would that help?"

"You said you didn't know him, so you couldn't look."

"Yeah, but I still wouldn't know him, just what you saw of him."

"Please, Skipper. I need to find him. Please, can you try?"

Their ears drooped way down. "You want me too… try and follow all of the trails?"

"Maybe just the recent ones?"

"I don't remember how to tell the difference."

"Please."

Skipper sighed, "I guess I can try, but it's like finding a dragonfly in a blizzard. I don't really know what I'm doing, and it will be exhausting."

"Thank you!" She reached out impulsively and clasped one of Skippers paws. "That's all I ask is that you try. Thank you."

They wrapped one of their tails around her wrist in an affectionate manner. "I know how important this is to you. And who knows! Maybe I'll learn a trick or two. Or remember one!"

Just like that their good mood was back. They swung and scampered away up into the vines.

"What was that about?" Xanaria asked, having wandered over.

"I asked them to help me find Thomas. I know he's out here somewhere, Cassi told me. Her charm is prophetic."

"Is that possible?"

"Maybe."

"Is that safe?"

"Probably."

"Justina I know you feel guilty, and I know you feel responsible, but what happened to Thomas was a situation he put himself in, not one you put him in."

"You don't know that."

"I do know that. You are not responsible for the people he got involved with. You weren't even there."

"Exactly, I wasn't there. I… I should have been. Maybe he wouldn't have gotten hurt if he'd had someone there to watch his back."

"How do you know he didn't?"

"I could have helped."

"How?"

"I don't know, but I could have tried! I could have done something, instead of just pretending that I was fine and waiting for him to take some initiative. I spent our whole marriage waiting for him. Well, I guess he finally did something and I- I don't think he would have if I hadn't always been telling him to do something, anything, and when he finally does I'm not even there to try and catch him! I didn't even see him fall!" Justina realized she had started crying but there was nothing she could do about it. "Yes. Of course I feel guilty. But I don't want to run anymore. I have to do something, I have to try!"

"So try! But stop putting other people in danger when you do!"

"I'm not putting anyone in danger! Skipper said they would try. That is not exactly an oath to succeed or die in the attempt!"

"You got that sweet librarian killed."

"How does your logic even work there? I can't be responsible for the man I very well may have pushed into a dangerous situation, but google one random word on your request and creepy murderous bad guys showing up out of the blue is completely my fault!"

"You keep running at this no matter how many people get hurt!"

"You're not being hurt, you're barely being inconvenienced!"

"I've been shot at, multiple times, just since I met you!"

"Oh, you loved that! You could have left at any moment but you stuck around. You don't even have to deal with the healing part, you just leave when you're done."

"Well, that's something we have in common, at least! You left, and now you're trying to pretend you never did! You're overcompensating and it's reckless! Maybe, just maybe, you could have worked a little bit harder in the first place. You'll never know! You can't change the past by throwing away your future. And for what? Just to prove to yourself that you ever loved him?!"

"How dare you! Of course I love my husband!"

"You don't leave someone you love! Not if you have the choice!"

"Love isn't always enough! Not when it gets all mixed up in bills and dirty laundry, broken dreams and endless deepening silence!"

"So you try harder. Sleeping Goddess, you've got to try! You could have at least tried!"

"I did try! It's none of your business, but I tried. For years, I tried! Even when I left it was the only thing left that I could try!

"That's bullshit!"

"What is your problem?"

"You gave up! You threw your husband in the ocean and now you're trying to fight the tide! You aren't even planning to forgive him! Sleeping Goddess, you were allowed to be in love! You got to marry someone you cared about, and you just gave up!"

"Marriage is a lot more than a wedding!"

"No shit! That's the point! That's supposed to be the point!"

"Oh, don't act like you know anything about marriage! You've never been married!"

"Of course I haven't! She could have been killed if we did anything so obvious!"

Justina opened her mouth but managed to choke back her response before she even knew what it was going to be. After all the shouting, the silence between them almost rang. Xanaria was crying too now, tears streaming steadily from her cervidian eyes. They stood like that for a moment, still braced, both disarmed.

In a quiet voice Justina said, "I'm sorry."

Xanaria just shook her head and walked away.

* * *

As soon as Xanaria knew Justina couldn't see her anymore, she broke into a run. She couldn't believe she had said that, any of that. She hadn't even realized how much she resented everything Justina had thrown away. She knew she wasn't being fair, but Sleeping Goddess drown it all, it _wasn't _fair. She ran back to her sleeping space and burrowed under the blankets. It wasn't fair, none of it. For the second time since she had found herself in this impossible place, Xanaria cried herself to sleep.

* * *

Justina stared after Xanaria, shocked. She couldn't think of anything to say. She kept looking at the place where Xanaria had disappeared until she smelled burning. She yanked her chili from the heat. She ate it all, an entire can of Chili. She didn't notice how it tasted, which was probably a good thing, but it made her uncomfortably full.

Once she finished cleaning up she started walking toward the marker for Xanaria's space but about halfway there she stopped and changed her mind. Instead she swung wide from it, heading back to her own room. She lay down on her bed feeling angry, sad, hurt, guilty, defensive, and a little nauseous. She stared up at the vines for a long time. She had yelled things she hadn't even realized were true until she was saying them. She wanted to apologize, but every time she was about to get up and go do it she felt the hurt and resentment rise up in her chest. She knew if she wasn't ready then there was no way Xanaria was ready. Eventually she drifted off. She dreamed a now familiar dream of the woman with the rabbit's ears but this time the laughter faded into sobs and there was blood splashed across a wedding gown.

* * *

When Xanaria woke, she knew she had to apologize. She didn't know how to go about it, but she knew she needed to figure it out. She felt her bond with Justina deeply. Xanaria knew she would go with Justina to the depths of the sea if need be. Just because Xanaria would never be able to save her own true love didn't mean she should let her frustration and helplessness take that same opportunity away from her friend. Her best friend. Her best friend in all of time and space. She could help. That at least she could do, because she did know that Justina loved Thomas. She had felt it beating in her own heart back when they had shared a mind. Yes, Justina needed someone to keep her from doing something mind-numbingly dangerous while chasing some scrap of an idea or wild goose, but that didn't mean she needed someone to take away her hope. You can't stop a cart skidding on ice by locking up the wheels, that would just break your cart. What you need is a guiding hand to get you back on decent traction without taking out the horse's hind legs.

_It will be good, _she decided. _It will be good to have a real quest_. _But how can I possibly take back what I said?_

* * *

Justina was making breakfast, when she heard Xanaria clear her throat behind her. She turned, unsure what to expect. She waited for Xanaria to say what she had come to say.

"Um... I'm sorry." Xanaria began twisting her hands together. "I didn't mean to imply your obsession wasn't worth it. I know you have to try to save your ex-husband. I know you love him. I just got worked up because… I think I was jealous and I hadn't realized that I was feeling that way and, um… I was a little scared too. I know it's important, that he's important, and I'm sorry."

"Obsession?"

"Ummm. Sorry. No. Not obsession- I didn't mean- um-"

"It's okay. I'm sorry, too. I should have talked to you about it first. Instead of just asking Skipper to take me where I needed to go."

Xanaria nodded, and turned to leave. Justina could feel a familiar silence spreading between them, but she didn't know what to do about it. Her heart shriveled inside her chest and squeezed. She was afraid to say anything, because she might make things worse. And she was afraid to not say anything because she knew all too well how resentment could grow in silence. This was the way she had felt when she began to realize things were going bad between her and Tom. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but nothing came out. And then it was too late. Xanaria had already left.

* * *

Xanaria rested her head in her hands. _That could have gone better. _She didn't have words for this feeling. It was like everything seemed to be fine, but their words still echoed between them whenever they approached each other. Like they were saying them again and again and there was nothing they could do about it. She shook her head. _We'll figure something out. I know Justina better than anyone. We will figure this out_.

Determined to think about something else, Xanaria looked around and then down. She noticed that she was sitting on a chest with a complicated metal lock. Curious she looked around for a key but then she realized, _I don't need a key._

It was a matter of moments for her to pop the lock. The chest held old books each labeled with a number in precise handwriting. Curious, she picked one up, noting absently that the number on it's cover was 4, and opened it at random.

_Fluffy realized (when I made them actually try) that they could go to specific worlds! I'm so glad I got them to try, just this little bit of control over themselves and their strange ship has made them so happy! Also, it means that maybe someday I can go home. Not soon. Maybe not ever. Now that I know I can, it feels much less important somehow._

She flipped a little farther on in the book.

_Something's wrong with Fluffy. We stopped by another world today. It's odd how quickly visiting a planet makes me think in days again. It was a beautiful world, Fluffy specifically chose it and asked me to tell them all about it when I get back. But I'm having trouble relaxing here. Fluffy looks exhausted, and yet they have continuously assured me that they don't need sleep. I think they brought me here in case they die. They want me to be in a beautiful place if they can't come back for me. _

Skipping a few more pages she read:

_Fluffy is fine. Fluffy is a toddler being told they have to take naps now, but Fluffy is fine. That freak out about hallucinations? Yeah, I inquired deeper and they were dreams. Fluffy fell asleep after running themselves ragged and got freaked out by the concept of dreams. These last few months have been a wild ride, so I'm glad it's all sorted out now and that Fluffy will calm down soon. In other news I have a bed now. I stole it from a dusty room in a castle so I don't think it will be missed but the oddest thing…_

Xanaria closed the book and rubbed her eyes. Reading wasn't something she had ever been able to do. Neither was picking locks. Those were skills Justina and Elizabeth had, not her own. She felt a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. She was pretty sure the book was talking about Skipper and that she had found the journals of a previous passenger. It made her feel a little more hopeful. Maybe Skipper could track down Thomas for Justina. Maybe once he had been found this weird reluctant silence between them would go away.


	9. In Which a Trail May Have Been Found and

**In Which a Trail May Have Been Found and Justina is Out of Her Depth**

* * *

The silence continued for days. It was easier to avoid each other, because when they did talk everything came out hesitant and forced. Neither of them liked it, and both wanted it to end. On top of that Skipper hadn't been seen since Justina had begged them for help so there was no one else to talk to. The silence just kept growing.

Justina was having trouble with the lack of differentiation between day and night. She slept when she was tired but that had never been a very reliable metric. She found herself checking the date dial on her watch way more than necessary. She wrote down everything she had learned or suspected in her notebooks. It helped her think things through and she was able to discard some of the more ridiculous theories and plans. Eventually she ran out of things to write down and had to find other things to keep her busy.

By her watch it was three days before she saw Skipper again, but her mind insisted it had been way longer. She was jogging around the outer wall when they popped out from behind a bush looking tired but pleased with themselves.

"We've made it back to your home Metaverse. As I suspected there are lots and lots of trails coming off of it. They're all mixed together too. But I think I've figured out some differences between the different groups. Like one I think doesn't have Thomas in it because all of them smell of fire elements and so were probably coming to your Metaverse and not leaving it. Do you know if there is anything different about him? In a fundamental way? I know that's a silly question but it would help narrow things down a little."

"I don't know. He was a pretty normal person in a lot of ways. Scared to try too hard. Does that help?"

"A little, I can rule out ones with magical elements, although I suppose not the ones coated with magic. That could just be bleed. We might have to visit a few dozen Metaverses to find out which one is him." Skippers whiskers drooped at the thought, but they continued optimistically, "This is quite a puzzle you've given me. It might be 'more marathon than sprint,' as Zuci used to say but it will be so satisfying when we finish!"

Justina squeaked as she thought about how long that would take. "Give me a second. He… um. Oh! That girl, Cassi, said he was sort of dead. That his body was dead but he wasn't. Also, that he might be able to get his body back? Is that the kind of thing that would help?"

Skippers ears perked up. "Yes! That's exactly what I needed to know! Although, there are still several options it could be. Your pilots don't seem to be very careful, do they? Is recklessness a virtue in your culture? But yes, that will help lots! I'll get right on that!"

* * *

Justina's watch wrapped itself slowly around two more days, that same reluctant silence heavy in the air.

Skipper appeared again looking exhausted. "I lost track of the path a few times and had to back track again, but I think we're here. If I followed the right path then your husband definitely ended up here, but I can't tell when. He might not still be there."

"I'm ready." Justina grabbed the bag she had been packing and repacking over the last couple days and snatched up the coat she had found on a hanger in her hand-me-down room. And hurried to the clearing with the Metastone.

When she arrived Xanaria was already there waiting by the Metastone. Her jaw was set but she was there. Justina paused, then asked carefully, "Are you coming too?"

"Yes. I know this is important to you and I don't want you to go without backup."

"Thank you, I'm sorry…" Justina struggled to find the words. "I know you don't think I should be doing this-"

"No, I was wrong. Thats… I'm sorry. I hadn't realized how much of my own baggage I was putting on you without realizing it. I wasn't being fair. Of course we're going to save your husband. Let's do this. I'll find you on the other side."

Justina nodded once, and stepped through the opening Skipper made for her as Xanaria sat cross legged and wrapped her arms around the Metastone.


	10. In Which They Get Side Tracked to Help P

**In Which They Get Side Tracked to Help Patience**

* * *

Justina stepped out of an ancient looking archway onto the small patch of grass surrounding it. She looked out at a road lined with houses she could only describe as patchwork. Some of the buildings looked familiar, like ones from her home metaverse, but seriously weathered and patched up. The repairs were anything from duct tape and cracked plastic roofing to an opalescent material that looked like stone but not quite. Curious she walked closer. The surface of the shimmery stuff was smooth but lumpy and it wasn't until she saw what was clearly a fingerprint that she realized why the texture looked familiar. It looked like someone had kneaded it hastily into shape, like clay, and never bothered to smooth it back out. When she reached out to touch it, it felt tingly under her fingers and mostly like rock but just slightly too warm. She was puzzling over it when she heard a click and the sound of an electronic device winding up.

"I'd appreciate it if you took your hands off my house, please."

Justina pulled away startled. She hadn't heard the woman approach.

"I'm sorry-" She began, turning. She stopped abruptly when she found herself facing a blocky looking taser that hummed ominously.

"I'm sorry." She repeated raising her hands and edging sideways toward the cracked sidewalk. "I've never seen material like that and I got carried away."

The woman humphed, but lowered the taser. Justina let out a quiet breath of relief when she heard it wind down.

"Our town was one of the first you know, to get aid after the Dome fell. The Opal Obelisk came by herself. Spent the first two months here. Shored up the whole town. She made us a Fountain too, pretty thing, but useless. You can see it in the middle of town. Artist types, you know. We thanked her of course. She did prop up our building's even if she found it boring. She helped other places too, but she came back to live here. Good material, too." The woman's voice was full of pride. "Nothing like the Ceramic Saint, his stuff crumbles in just a decade or so, you know. But the Opal Obelisk's, well, some of her opaline sculptures have been floating around the collectors since way back before, if you know what I mean." The woman patted her wall with a proprietary grin.

"That's amazing." Justina didn't know, but she tried to sound impressed and kept one eye on the lowered taser.

The woman looked her up and down. "You looking for the market, then? The auction doesn't start until tomorrow but the rest of the market's there, and busier than I've ever seen it."

"Yes," Justina snatched at the lead, "and I'm supposed to meet a friend somewhere around here."

"Well, you missed your target. It's four blocks that way then two more to your right. Myself, I don't see what all the fuss is about, I can't wait until someone takes that thing away. I know everyone loves the business, but this town just isn't meant to be so busy."

Justina nodded sympathetically, "At least It sounds like it will calm down after the auction, right?"

"Not enough." The woman finally holstered the taser and then waved at her. "Run along now, and good luck."

"Thank you! You too." Justina was already leaving. _You too? Why did I say that?_

* * *

Patience sat on the steps to the small town hall building, her head in her hands. Her shield, a 16 inch bronze buckler, had fallen in the dust by her feet. She knew she would have to clean it later but right now she didn't give a shit. _Mother would pitch a fit about respecting your tools. But she isn't here right now, is she? _She felt the tears welling up again and scrubbed them aggressively away. Thus preoccupied, she didn't notice Xanaria arrive in her head.

Patience was 13 years old as of last week, she wore a short bronze dress over black leggings and knee high leather boots whoes cracked paint almost matched her dress, and her mother's remains were about to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. No one would listen to her when she tried to get her mother back.

Xanaria tried not to swear inside the child's head, but it was hard.

Patience stiffened but then relaxed as Xanaria let her 'remember' what Xanaria was and how she got there.

_~How can I help?~_

_Honest to god, if I knew that I wouldn't need help. My mother is still in there. I know it! She's the only family I have left! And I know I can talk her out of the sculpture if I can just get to it. She has to be inside! She doesn't turn things into opaline, she just creates it. Maybe I could break the shell or something? I could get her out._

~_I'll help you get her back, I promise. I know someone who should be able to help. Or at the very least someone adults will listen to. She's around here somewhere, I'm sure. She's also looking for someone she loves.~_

_Okay. _ Patience sniffed and wiped her eyes again with her hands. Then scrubbed her palms dry on her leggings. Picking up her buckler she dusted it off halfheartedly before storing it on her back.

_Where is she? _

_~I'm not exactly sure. Her name is Justina, and she's about 5'6" with short dark hair that sticks out at odd angles. I think it's trying to curl but it isn't long enough right now. She'll be asking anyone she can about a 'Thomas Well,' that's her husband but he got lost.~ _Xanaria pictured Justina as clearly as she could, hoping it would be better than her clumsy words.

_If you don't know where she is, how were you planning to find her?_

_~I don't know. I thought I'd figure it out when I got here.~_

_So, what? You want to just wander the world until you find her?_

_~Not the world. She should be pretty nearby. Skipper would have made sure she came out as close to me as they could aim.~_

_So then... Just wander around this town all day?_

_~I didn't realize you would have more important problems, I'm sorry.~_

Patience sighed, _It's fine. You're right about an adult being helpful, if she'll listen._

_~She'll listen to me.~_

_I know someone who can find her. _Patience felt an extra weight in her gut. _I just have to apologize first._

* * *

When Justina cleared the last of the buildings she thought for a moment that she had stepped into a fair or a circus. Brightly colored tents, booths, and tables were set in maze-like patterns, filling a wide field that had been grassy before so many feet had ground the green into the dirt. Along one side were hotels, pawn shops, a bank, and the town hall. She could see the tops of trees in the distance, over the brightly colored tents and booths. Several trees seemed to have dirigibles tied to them.

She moved through the bustling crowd with little difficulty. There were a lot of people, but it was only about as densely packed as a grocery store on a busy day. She had no idea how she would go about spotting Thomas in the throng. She didn't know where she was going, and people kept trying to sell her things.

"How would you like to own your very own shard of The Antelopes Shattered horn? Guaranteed to grant the holder with the hero's own grace!"

_Well_, Justina thought, _I have to start looking somewhere._ Instead of answering him she asked, "Have you seen or heard of a man named Thomas Wells somewhere around here? He's my husband, he has dark hair and a beard. Oh! Although I suppose he might be a disembodied voice inside your head or somebody else's head. You haven't heard anything about where he…" She trailed off as the man backpedaled frantically, eyes wide.

"Yeah," she muttered to herself. "I might need to work on my elevator pitch."

* * *

Patience scowled at her feet, arms crossed. "I'm sorry I yelled at you. I know you tried. I was scared and missing my mom. I shouldn't have taken it out on you. I'm sorry."

The man blinked at her slowly. He wore a brightly colored hat with ear-flaps tied tightly over his ears despite the warm weather. He stubbed out his joint on the sole of his shoe and tucked it into his pocket before responding. "Don't worry about it, kid. People have given me worse over less." He smiled lazily. "What is it you want now? I can already tell you that I'm not going to be able to hear a heartbeat in that statue just because you didn't like my answer last time. It's just a statue. Your mum was already paid for her work. Everything is shiny, legal, and tight as..." He trailed off, seeming to remember who he was talking to.

Patience gritted her teeth. "No. I just need some help finding someone in this crowd. She'll be asking people about someone named Thomas Wells. Can you hear anything like that?"

"Maybe you should go back to your babysitter."

"I'm 13! I don't need a babysitter."

He rolled his eye. "Sure kid."

"Look, please? She's an adult and I think she'll help me get my mom back."

He shrugged, "Okay, Buckles, I'll see what I can do."

Glaring at him as he untied his cap Patience said, "It's Buckler. Like the shield."

"Yeah, that." Now uncovered, his ears were glowing blue and very large. They seemed to move independently of each other and sparked every once in a while. After a moment he nodded. "Yeah, she's here. She's over that way, by the ice cream shop that plays the jingly music box Beethoven. It's missing one of it's higher notes."

He waved her off putting his hat back on and tying down the flaps. Patience turned to go.

_~I know you're still mad from earlier, but you do need to thank him.~_

"Thank you." Patience told him, grudgingly. He had already pulled his joint back out and waved again.

Patience and Xanaria took off.

* * *

Justina's luck hadn't gotten any better. No one had seen Thomas, no one had heard about him, no one knew where he was.

_Skipper said this is where he went. Or somewhere near here. I can't give up. _

She had tried showing people the picture she had in her wallet from their honeymoon, but that hadn't helped. Besides, if he was a pilot like Xanaria a picture wouldn't actually be what people had seen.

"Justina?"

She looked around and found herself looking down at a kid with a stubborn set to her chin and salt smudges from dried tears faintly visible on her dark skin. She was dressed in shiny bronze, and had a small round shield over one shoulder.

Justina blinked and asked uncertainly "Xanaria?"

The girl nodded shortly. "She's here. And I'm The Buckler."

"Ah, that explains the shield."

The girl looked surprised and gratified. "Yes, exactly. Like the shield! No one ever gets that."

"So are you a hero then?"

"Yes. Well, in training. My mother-" her voice broke, but she cleared her throat and continued. "She says I'm too young to do hero stuff yet, nevermind that Hex Destiny is only a little older than I am and she's been a hero for years."

Justina nodded. She had heard that name many times already, often combined with a couple others, in overheard conversations and marketeers trying to capitalize off a household name. She hadn't thought much of it, since it had nothing to do with Thomas, so she knew almost nothing about Hex Destiny. But she could recognize when someone was talking about their personal hero and didn't say anything.

"Are you having any luck finding Thomas?"

Justina's shoulders slumped "No. I think I need to change tactics but I have no idea what else to do. It's not like they sell trackers for dimensional travelers around here."

"I mean, someone probably says they do, but in all likelihood they would just give you a random beeping box or a piece of rock on a string. And that wouldn't be much help."

Justina sighed. "You haven't heard of anyone named Thomas Wells around here have you?"

"No, we would have told you right away. Actually…" The girl cleared her throat, "I was wondering if you could help me. I know you're busy but Xanaria thought… Look, my mother is in trouble and no one will listen to me and- and I need her back." The tears spilled over again. "Shit. I'm sorry. I just..." Patience trailed off scrubbing at her face.

"Of course I'll help. I wasn't making any progress anyway. We'll find your mother. It'll be okay. I'll help." She put an arm awkwardly around the crying girl and Patience fell against her sobbing as she hadn't allowed herself to do this whole miserable month. Justina hugged her and murmured soothing noises the way she had always done for Alice when they were young and her little sister still felt things so much more intensely than anyone around her.

After a while, Patience began breathing more easily. She wiped her cheeks and pulled away from Justina.

"Wow, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to just… I… ummm…"

Justina smiled. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

Patience gave an awkward shrug, avoiding her eyes. "Yeah, well, thank you for agreeing to help."

"Of course. Between the three of us finding your mother shouldn't be too hard."

"I don't need her found, I know exactly where she is. I just need help getting to her."

"Where is she?"

"She's inside the statue they are auctioning off tomorrow. They are calling it The Opal Obelisk's Self-Portrait. But my mother never made self portraits. She hated the idea. She likes to make things from nature or mythology, and she loves abstract flowing forms, things like that. She wouldn't be caught dead sculpting a self-port-" Patience choked, realizing what she had just said.

"Inside the statue?" Justina pretended not to notice Patience's expression, hoping to gloss over the moment. "How does that happen?"

"It doesn't. It's not supposed to. She creates opaline and then sculpts it. Sometimes, when she would work too hard or fast, it would creep up on her fingers. Then she'd take me for ice cream and by morning she would be back at work. She would always stop when that happened, always. But this project." Patient shook her head, "The client kept pushing her to finish it, and he gave her some money in advance so she felt obligated to work on it. I wasn't there, I was at school, so I couldn't remind her that she needed to stop when it started coating her fingers. Sometimes she gets in the zone and she doesn't notice right away. Especially when she has a deadline. And she had been working all night and I should have realized, I should have stayed home, I could have spotted for her."

"You couldn't have foreseen it. Don't beat yourself up about the past. Instead try saying 'when I get her back we'll figure out a system so this doesn't happen again.'"

"What are you, a therapist?

"No, I'm sorry. Just some advice someone gave me once."

"I don't need useless advice. I need someone to help me get my mom."

"I'm sorry. What happened next?"

"When I got home from school they were already loading her onto the truck. It was her deadline that day, you see. I didn't get a good look at the sculpture, but it was of her, detailed and lifelike, sculpting a half-finished dragon. I knew something was off right away but the man in the black suit handed me a check and told me to give it to my mother when she got home. He sounded super annoyed, he must have been waiting for a while. But she never came home that night and I realized what must have happened. The shell must have grown up all over her and now she's trapped inside. They won't let me near it but I'm sure if I could just talk to her I could get her out. Or if I could crack the shell then she could be released but they won't let me even try it. They say it's a multimillion-dollar piece of art and not something to mess with and they heard my plan and they put a restraining order on me and I have no money to try and buy it at the auction and I don't know what to do!"

"Maybe Xanaria can help, she piloted a master thief recently, she must have learned some skills?"

Patience looked hopeful and then dubious. "Yeah, but I'm not sure how much I picked up from Elizabeth. This is a pretty big thing to start out with, let's make that that plan B."

Justina blinked then shook her head. "You know, having been an avatar myself doesn't really make this any less confusing to talk about. Come on, planning needs fuel and those sandwiches look really good."

The man selling sandwiches was willing to barter, and Justina traded him three cans of black beans for two sandwiches with more filling than bread. Patience led her to an out of the way bench. They sat and brainstormed while they ate. In the end Justina didn't like their plan, but she was hard pressed to think of anything better.


	11. In Which Justina Gets Patience In and Pa

**In Which Justina Gets Patience In and Patience Gets Herself Thrown Out**

* * *

Justina swung by the town hall. She looked around and saw a recycling bin in the lobby. She approached it as unobtrusively as she could and quickly fished out an empty folder and a handful of mostly uncrumpled pages. She got a few odd looks, but she was already leaving.

She began flipping through it as she walked around the edge of the market and strode up to the front door of the building that housed the offices and storage rooms that kept the market functional. A business card started to slide out of the stack and Justina caught it, glanced at it, and then tucked it into her pocket.

Patience stayed close at her heel trying to look attentive and unimportant at the same time. They passed a few other people, but unlike when she had tried to go this way by herself no one commented on Patience's presence or tried to help her get back where she belonged. She was with an adult and therefore somebody else's problem. Justina didn't even pause as she walked through a swinging door labeled "Employees Only" still frowning thoughtfully at a wad of papers. Patience glanced over Justina's shoulder and was amused to notice most of the papers were upside down. They passed a couple guards and Justina waved vaguely at them without looking up. They nodded back and ignored Patience.

They paused once when Justina noticed a fire map by the stairs. It had a lot of labels for emergency exits and fire extinguishers and not much else, but there was a greyed out section labeled "High Security Storage." It had one marked door in a short section of hallway. Justina changed direction and headed for it.

When they were approaching the hallway Patience pulled on Justina's arm to stop her and whispered. "There will be a guard. If you can't get us in, could you distract him? Just get him to move a little away from the door without looking at it? I can sneak in with skills I learned from Elizabeth."

Justina nodded, and continued walking. When they reached the corner Patience caught a glimpse of the guard and instantly pulled back out of sight. Justina didn't pause or question it. The man was shuffling a deck of cards, and hadn't seen them yet. He was dressed in red and brown. Red cargo pants tucked into short brown boots, brown leather jacket over a red sleeveless shirt and a pair of what appeared to be red spandex gloves tucked into his brown leather belt. When she saw the gloves Justina realized he might be a super with a costume rather than a regular guard with very questionable fashion sense. His hair, carefully gelled into a windswept mess, told her he was trying a little too hard. As she drew closer his head snapped up and the cards disappeared into his pocket. He watched her as she passed, still pretending to read the folder. She passed entirely by him and then paused and turned back.

"Excuse me, I was supposed to authenticate a piece of art somewhere in this building hours ago. Can you tell me where I am?"

He had relaxed when she had passed but he straightened up again when she addressed him, looking surprised.

"Ah…" He said, "Can I see some ID?"

She let herself look annoyed and held out the business card from her pocket. She didn't move any closer, so in order to take it he had to step away from the door. She carefully didn't watch Patience use Xanaria's skills to slip down the hall. The guard looked up at her.

"James McElroy?" He asked doubtfully, as his keys were lifted from his belt.

"It's short for Jameson-Irish. My mother was not sober when she was filling out my birth certificate." She maintained eye contact as in her peripheral vision Patience silently got the door open.

"I see why you would shorten it." He still sounded a little doubtful, as his keys were returned to his belt.

"Mmmhmmm." She ignored the door closing silently behind him.

"It says you specialize in paintings?"

"Yes, that's right." She hadn't noticed that

"There are no paintings in there right now." He gestured behind him.

She looked at him like he was an idiot. "I have no idea where I am. I no longer have any idea where I am supposed to be. If you can tell me were the painting I'm supposed to look at is I'll go there, but if you can point me toward an exit I would be even happier to leave."

"Ah." Relieved he gave her directions to the front door.

She left. She didn't like it, but she had to trust that Patience and Xanaria knew what they were doing.

* * *

_What do we do now? I never really expected to get this far._

_~Well, I guess we look for statue sized crates? That's got to be bigger than most of these.~_

She swung the penlight across a room full of crates. Everything was carefully packed up waiting for tomorrow. They each had white labels on them, but the text was small enough Patience had to lean down to read it. The one they were next to apparently contained "Pre-Dome Life Knifes: Full set: Anonymous: Sentinel City: Item # 17" They walked between crates looking for something big enough to hold a human sized statue.

Suddenly the door opened and a flashlight beam swept around the room catching her full in the face. She had been quiet, she was sure of it, she hadn't even touched anything yet. Caught completely off guard she froze.

"Patience?" Came a puzzled voice. "What are you doing here?"

An overhead light came on and Patience relaxed to see the guard in red and brown she had avoided earlier. He had been her mother's side kick when she was a toddler and had babysat her many times. "Hey, Max. I just need to see my mother."

"Opal isn't here." He told her confused, "You shouldn't be here either, this is a high security area."

"She is here." Patience insisted. "She's in the statue and I need to talk her out of it. No one will let me see it. I don't even need to touch it, just let me talk to her."

"That doesn't make any sense. Come on. Lets get you out of here and you can come back to see it after the auction. I'm sure they'll leave it on display for a while, rich people like to show off what they've bought. But you can't be here right now."

Patience stared up at him, her jaw set, feet planted. He ran a red spandex covered hand through his hair and sighed.

"Go home, Patience. You could get in a lot of trouble breaking in here. I understand that you miss your mom but this is part of the hero's path. She'll be back when she is done with whatever Quest has beckoned, but you aren't going to help her by getting yourself thrown in juvie."

Through gritted teeth Patience repeated. "My mother is in that statue. I need to get her out."

"Patience…" He sighed again, then shook his head. "I don't have time for this. Tomorrow you can ask the new owners to let you see it, but right now this area is off-limits."

He put a hand on her shoulder, trying to turn her toward the exit, but she didn't budge. Exasperated he raised his eyebrows at her. "Don't make me carry you, young lady."

"Max!" Patience stomped her foot and instantly wished she hadn't. Feeling childish, she dug in her heels and stood firm.

He shook his head and then, feet still planted, she rose off the ground and started floating backwards.

Patience struggled, but her strength could do nothing against the air. "Damn it, Max, let me go!"

He shook his head and kept moving, "Patience I like you, you'll be a great hero someday. I'm not going to arrest you, even though you broke in here. But I'm at work. There are people who would pay a lot of money to steal anything in this place, and I don't have time for this."

"My mother is in here!"

"Your mother creates opaline, she doesn't become it. You of all people should know that."

"It grew up over her, it does that when she's tired and not careful!"

"Patience…"

"Listen to me, Max!"

"Look, how about I get you lunch after the auction? We can play a couple rounds of Uno, and we can talk then, how does that sound?"

"That will be too late!"

"I know what it's like, feeling lonely. But I'm sure Opal will be back as soon as she can. Go home, your babysitter must be frantic."

Patience grabbed for the door frame as she floated through it and missed, "I don't need a sitter! I'm 13!"

He set her down gently "Ah. Yes. You're a teenager now, practically a grown up. Then you're old enough to know that this place is off limits."

Patience scowled at him and started stomping toward the door again, but she felt herself lift up an inch and slide backwards. She flailed uselessly at the air, "Max!"

"That's enough, Patience. Go. Home." And he closed the door firmly.

"You're not a hero! You're a security guard in a stupid costume!" She yelled at the closed door. There was no answer. Fuming she glared at it.

* * *

Justina had ducked behind the corner of a brightly colored cloth booth when she had heard the door open. She waited until Patience stopped yelling before looking out. She saw Patience glaring at the closed door, fists clenched at her sides.

Justina approached cautiously, "I take it things didn't go according to plan?"

"No."

"They'll be expecting us now. Let's find somewhere warm and regroup. Figure out what to do next."

Patience didn't respond, but she let herself get pulled away.


	12. In Which They Drink Tea and Try Again

**In Which They Drink Tea and Try Again**

* * *

After a few minutes of walking, Justina turned right; She remembered seeing inns and diners that way. But Patience turned left on a road that headed back toward the residential side of town. Justina hurried to catch up, "Shouldn't we go somewhere we can sit down and talk inside? There was a cheap hole in the wall restaurant I passed earlier today."

Patience sighed, "Go where you want. I'm going home. I have plenty of heat and light there. You can come too."

"Right, of course."

Justina followed her and they lapsed back into silence. After another couple blocks Justina cleared her throat.

"Maybe you could tell me what happened? So we can plan for next time?"

Reluctantly Patience began to tell her about the storage room and Max. She grew more animated as she talked. Justina struggling to keep up with the frequent backtracks, repetition and tangents into other stories. As they reached a small cottage glimmering with carefully sculpted decorative opaline fortification, Patience was finally winding down.

She fumbled out a key and opened the door, flipping on a light at the same time. Justina was surprised at the lack of mess. It was a small space, the door opened into a combined living room, kitchen, and dining area. There was opaline filigree twining up the walls in here too, looking like climbing vines, windblown saplings, and somehow also the wind itself. The shimmering material seemed to sway at the corners of her vision and Justina found she liked the artist's work immensely.

There was a small work table in one corner scattered with lumps of opaline and what looked like scales the size of her thumbnail. But everything else was neatly put away.

Patience went to the stove, put on a kettle, and turned on the oven. Then she went to the fridge and pulled out a frozen wad of pad thai in a plastic pouch. After a pause she grabbed a second one. It was so intensely ordinary, in the midst of a town Justina had mostly seen as a falling apart mess, that the dissonance made her a little dizzy.

"What happened here?" She asked abruptly.

Patience looked up from decanting frozen food into glass bowls, confused. "What happened where?" She put the bowls on a cookie sheet and put them into the oven.

Justina watched this a little concerned, "This world, what happened to it? You have houses patched together with debri and twine but you also have freezers and microwave meals and is that safe? I don't think bowls are supposed to go into the oven."

"They say oven safe on them, and it's not like we have a microwave. They're way too expensive and besides, everyone is focusing on bigger things than making life convenient."

Patience pulled a chair out by the counter and gestured for Justina to sit down.

"As for what happened here, after the dome fell all the supers have been trying to help people-"

"Wait, sorry to interrupt, but please back up further. What dome?"

"Oh," Patience shrugged as if it was the most normal thing ever. "400 years ago some jackass named Migrane trapped everyone with super powers in an impenetrable dome and kept resetting the timeline every few years so we never aged or remembered things. But then a couple years ago Hex Destiny and her friends destroyed the dome and we learned how long it had been and that there had been an apocalypse on the outside and now everyone is trying to help. My mom moved us out of Sentinel City as soon as she could. She said it made her feel trapped just living there, even though she knew she could leave at any time. She said it was worth the inconvenience of living in a 'third world country' whatever that means since we only moved a couple dozen miles and this is definitely the same country. And besides if she had chosen a bigger town there would have been a lot more infrastructure already. This one just got electricity since we've been here. She was really happy because it freed up a lot of time for her to work on her next art thing. Most of the old locals treat it with suspicion but it's so useful they're growing to like it too."

The teapot whistled, distracting Patience from her tangent. Justina felt like there were some important pieces missing from her story, but it did explain some things. Patience poured tea for them both and pulled out the bowls of pad thai. They smelled good but they were dry and soggy at the same time. She didn't say anything, it was hot food and she could tell from Patiences expression that she didn't like it much either. When they finished, and their tea had cooled enough to hold, they relocated to a couple overstuffed chairs in the living space side of the room. Patience curled up in hers sideways, one leg slung over the arm and the other tucked under her. Justina settled back, with a sigh.

"So," Patience sipped her tea, "what now?"

"Well, we can't get back into the warehouse."

"I'm not giving up."

"Of course we aren't. Where do the auction items go next? People will want to see them in order to bid on them."

"They go to the tent behind the stage. But they'll have even higher security there."

Justina set down her tea thoughtfully. "They'll have higher security tomorrow, but will they have any security now?"

* * *

It wasn't long before they were slipping through the dark and climbing into a pitchblack tent. Although calling it a tent was only accurate in that the walls were made of taught well oiled cloth. It was dry and clean with lights, outlets, and professionally done wiring that made it clearly a permanent structure, with a solid wood floor on the same level as the stage. In fact, carefully shining the penlight around the space Justina realized it was part of the stage. The whole front wall of the tent could be opened up to reveal what was inside, and there was enough bare stage outside that when the tent was closed it could serve as a backdrop.

"What now?" Patience whispered, "There's no nowhere to hide, we'll be spotted as soon as they arrive."

Justina didn't answer right away, running the light across the floor._ If this is part of the stage then… There!_

The light stopped at the thin rectangle on the floor that marked the edges of a trap door.

"Oh!" Patience gasped quietly before Justina had to say anything. It took them long minutes to figure out how to open it from above but they eventually figured out that what looked like a knot in the wood was actually a release catch if you pushed it in a couple inches. The trapdoor banged as it swung down. Patience cringed at the sound, and Justina shielded the light in case anyone had heard them and came looking. They jumped down quickly and closed the trapdoor again, sliding the heavy rod back into place.

The space was used for storage as well as trapdoor access, it seemed. Patience could stand up but Justina had to duck her head awkwardly, so she settled back against a pile of rolled-up cloth backdrops. She kept a wary eye on the row of giant lights that appeared to be welded to C clamps and hung on a bar that ran all the way around the small space.

As they waited, Justina felt her eyes drifting insistently closed. She was tired from the long day and soon she was asleep. Patience unrolled part of one of the lighter backdrops and draped it over her. After a minute Patience crawled under it too. There would be a lot to do come morning, but for now they slept under what looks like three sheets sewn together and finger painted as a forest.

* * *

Justina came suddenly wide awake to the sound of footsteps overhead and wheels creaking under a heavy load. Patience was still asleep beside her but after a loud thump of a crate being unloaded she sat up with a start and a little squeak. She looked a little wild eyed and ready to bolt. Justina waved at her gently then put a finger to her lips and smiled as reassuringly as she could. Patience blinked and relaxed.

Following Justina's lead they rolled up the backdrop they had slept under and then ducked down behind the pile. It wasn't much cover, but it was something. Hopefully, no one would come down here at all. They listened to the work men upstairs as they laughed and joked and dragged expensive things around and popped the tops off crates. Every once in a while a loud voice would yell at them to get back to work, and they would stop talking for a little while.

Justina's feet had long fallen asleep by the time they were finally done. She heard the loud voice again, but this time it sounded happy. "Well done! We made good time and now we have almost an hour before the auction even starts, where upon we shall open the curtain in a big reveal, and everyone will see what an amazing job we did setting up! Mwaha, ha-ak, cough cough… Sorry old habit. Ah, well done, as I said. I'll buy you all coffee."

"Thanks, boss. And don't worry about the monologuing, we don't mind."

As the sounds of their footsteps faded, Patience started to rise but Justina put a hand on her shoulder and leaned over to whisper. "Give it a couple of minutes. We don't want them to come back for something they forgot and find us right away."

Patience nodded and settled back down. Justina checked her watch and took the opportunity to stretch her legs and rub some life back into her feet. Once a few minutes had passed without incident she rose quietly. Popping the trap door open she realized that getting out was going to be harder than getting in had been. The top of her head was over floor level but even getting her elbows up and out was tricky. She tried to jump and grab something but there was nothing within reach that looked like it could support her weight.

After several minutes of scrambling, Justina lay panting on the wooden floor boards glaring up at the rectangular hole above her. She heard a scrape on the floor to her right.

"Maybe this will help?" Patience's voice was full of Xanaria's dry amusement.

Justina turned her head to see the 4ft ladder Patience had just brought over. Justina made a face at her, unwilling to swear in front of a kid, and rolled out of the way.

"After you." She gestured vaguely at the trapdoor.

Shaking her head and smiling, Patience climbed out into the room overhead. By the time she got up the ladder Justina had caught her breath and climbed up after her.

There was enough light seeping in through the white fabric of the tent that they didn't need a flashlight to see the displayed items. Justina still had to get close to read any labels, but nothing was crated up anymore and Patience was able to run straight to her mother's statue. Justina took a moment to gaze around the room at the array of expensive art and antiques. Some of it was breathtaking, like a silver swan that swam, seemingly at random, across a rippling golden pond all set about with twisted wire trees. But some of it amused her, like the powered down slushie machine she saw off in one corner.

She followed Patience to where she stood in front of her mother's statue. Patience had both hands pressed to her mouth and tears filling her eyes. The statue was incredibly lifelike and after all the impossible things she had seen Justina had no problem believing it could truly be a person.

The statue was of a tall woman whose thick tightly curled hair fluffed, effortless and elegant, around her head. She wore a loose flowing sleeveless dress belted at the waist that was tucked in around her crossed legs but fanned out behind her. She was biting her lip absent mindedly and the intensity of her focus traveled down her arms and into the half formed dragon lying curled up in her lap. It's head looked finished; a sleeping lizard with matte flurries around it's nostrils that suggested smoke was leaking out. Somehow she had made it convey a sense of peace and at the same time exhausted mischief. Justina could tell it was a child. The artwork truly was stunning. The neck curved elegantly down to where one of the woman's hands was teasing individual scales into it's skin, her hands elegant and nimble even in stillness. Her other hand was held to the side, ready and waiting full of opaline lumps that seemed to bubble from her palm. The back half of the dragon would have looked good if she hadn't seen the head already. It had no scales but was smooth and Justina could see the underlying musculature of the mythical creature. She could tell that whether or not it had sculpted opaline bones, the artist had known exactly where it's bones should be. It was incredible.

Justina slowly realized that she had been staring open mouthed at the statue for some time while Patience cried silently beside her. Justina put an arm around Patience who leaned against her. After a couple minutes Patience took a deep breath and pulled away again. She still had tears on her cheeks, but Justina pretended not to notice them.

"Alright." Patience said mostly to herself. "It's time."

Walking around in front of the statue Patience knelt down to eye level.

"Mom?" She said gently. "Mom, I know you're in there. Can you look at me please?" The statue didn't move but Patience thought she saw a flicker in it's eyes. "Hey, hi. Mom? It's me. It's Patience. I'm here now. Can you shrug it off? For me? We can get ice cream like we always do. I can buy it this time. It'll be my treat, just... please come out."

She reached up and cupped her mother's cheek. The opaline was cold and hard against her palm but shaped just like her mother's familiar face. "Please mom? I know you can do it if you try. Please?"

Patience continued on that vein for a while. Justina sank onto an iron and emerald bench probably worth more than the house she and Thomas had lived in. She didn't want to watch but she couldn't look away.

When it became obvious that coaxing wouldn't bring her mother out of the statue Patience dropped her hands and rocked back on her heels scrubbing at her face with her palms. Her lips trembled and then went tight.

"Oh, come on!" She shouted, standing up and clenching her fists as she glared down at her mother. "You're better than this! You taught me better than this! I don't care if it's hard, come out of that damn statue, right now!"

Justina looked around anxiously as Patience continued to shout, but didn't do anything to stop her. Eventually, Patience ran out of breath and just stood there, panting, still staring at the unresponsive statue.

"How could you do this to me?" She eventually whispered to her mother, kneeling in front of her once more. "How could you leave me alone like this? Why wont you just come out? I need my mother. I need you. Please don't leave me alone to deal with all these people pretending you'll be right back. They think I'm crazy, or childish. I don't even know how to use the washing machine, you were going to teach me this week, please Mom, don't do this. Don't abandon me." Tears were streaming down her cheeks again but she ignored them.

"Come on." She took her mother's shoulders and shook her carefully. Under her super strength the statue rocked as if made from light plastic but didn't stirr on it's own. Patience shook harder and the statue rattled and rocked against it's low platform. She let go, worried she might cause some damage if she shook any harder.

She took a moment. She put a hand to her mother's chest just a little to the left and closed her eyes trying desperately to feel anything, even the smallest vibration. For a second she thought she felt something but she wasn't sure. She held her breath… but there was nothing.

_It's fine, that doesn't mean anything. The opaline is really strong. It must be muffling her heartbeat or holding her in stasis or something._

In the silence Patience heard footsteps out on the stage. Her eyes went wide. There was the scrape of something against the wood and then a tiny electronic squeal. Justina lept from her seat but stood rooted to the spot.

"Testing testing. Main speakers. 1, 2, 3. Testing. How's that Mark? Okay. Left side front…"

"Please," Patience begged her mother quietly, as the sound check continued outside. "Please come out. Please, I am begging you, come out. Come out for me? Please? I'll do the dishes every day, I promise, just please please please come out."

She continued to beg as the russling babble of a crowd flooded into the space outside. She pleaded desperately as the announcements began.

"Please please please please please mother please come out, come back to me…" Patience said.

Just then the announcer cried out, "And so without further ado, let the auction begin!"

The curtain was swept aside and light flooded in.

"What the hell!" The announcer exclaimed. "Security!"

Patience panicked. She had failed to coax her mother out, she had failed to guilt her mother out, she had failed to yell her mother out, she had failed to find proof of a heartbeat. She had failed. She didn't look to see the men turning to run toward the stage. She only had one choice left; break her out. Desperation led speed to her own super strength as Patience brought her hand around, palm flat to crack the shell around her mother. She hit her in the closest arm, the one held a little away from the rest of the sculpture, palm filled with opaline. There was a sickening crack. To Patiences horror, instead of the spiderweb cracks she had expected, the arm snapped off cleanly. She caught it by reflex and felt something cold and damp against her wrist. Her mind locked up as she saw a smear of cold clotted blood on her hands and leaking slowly from around the bones in the center of the opaline statue.

* * *

Everyone close enough to see what had happened froze to stare in horror. Justina winced as her suspicion was confirmed. When she'd seen the statue she'd begun to wonder how long someone could be trapped in there without food, water, or air and still be alive. She hadn't expected there to be little left but bones, but at least it was a little less gruesome this way.

Justina moved carefully through the horrified silence and plucked the microphone from it's stand. Knowing she wouldn't have long before people snapped out of their shock. She took a deep breath.

"There are bones inside this statue, the bones of a brilliant artist and outstanding mother. This should be a crime scene. Her body never should have been used like this. Her daughter should not have been ignored." She dodged under the arm of one of the security men who tried to take the mic from her. "Also if anyone knows anything about Thomas Wells please come talk to me! I need to find him. I'll probably be in prison!" She had to shout the last bit as the mic was successfully wrested from her hands.

Security dragged her off. One of them muttered, "Damn right, you'll be in prison."

Over their shoulders she saw Patience still clutching her mother's arm. She didn't react when someone tried to take it from her but she also didn't let go and they were unable to budge it against her super strength.

_Xanaria, please take care of her._ Justina thought in desperation. _I don't want to know what kind of villain she could be._


	13. In Which Patience Struggles and Justina

**In Which Patience Struggles and Justina Finds Out Just How Late They Are**

* * *

~_Patience-~_

_Shut up._

_~Okay, but remember I'm here, and I care about you.~_

* * *

Justina sat on the hard cot in her cell trying to look more calm than she felt. She didn't know where they had taken Patience. Justina hoped the poor girl was somewhere safe and not in a cell like this. She was worried what Patience would do and she was worried that this metaverse might not have a system of law that she understood. But she had some practice dealing with people who weren't sure if you've done something wrong. So, she pushed all her worries off her face and sat on the cot looking bored, unconcerned, and confident that she would be released soon. It had worked when airport security was looking for the pocket knife she had forgotten to remove from her bag and it worked when she'd gone drinking at 19. She hoped it would work again.

* * *

_She's dead._

_~Yeah.~_

_I should have known. I'm so stupid. So young and naive and stupid._

_~I didn't know either, and I'm not as young as you or anything like naive.~_

_You're stupid then. All the clues were right there. I should have seen it. I should have known. We should have known._

_~Unfortunately, I am very familiar with denial.~_

_You aren't going to disagree about being stupid?_

_~After some of the things I've done, I cannot argue against that.~_

_I should have been sooner. I should have been there, stopped this right at the start._

_~Self blame is also something I am very familiar with. However, I don't see what you could have done different without being able to see the future.~_

_Shut up!_

_~I love you Patience. You are a good person, and you did everything you could.~_

* * *

After about an hour Justina's back started to ache. She worried that lying down would look defeatist, but eventually her body told her she wasn't 25 anymore and she didn't get a choice. She put her arms behind her head and crossed her legs hoping she looked nonchalant and not like she was settling in. She raised her eyebrows at the young guard outside her cell. He blushed and returned to his crossword.

She sighed silently and kept waiting.

* * *

_They shouldn't have pushed her so hard. Bastards._

_~Who?~_

_Those goddamn vultures who thought a couple hundred dollars meant they could demand anything they wanted. _

_~I don't-~_

_The client! Whoever the fuck ordered that damn statue!_

_~Ah.~_

_I'll kill them. I'll find out who they are and I'll kill them. _

_~Do you think they knew what would happen to her?~_

_Who cares? It doesn't matter. She is dead because of them so they should die. She deserves justice._

_~That sounds more like revenge than justice.~_

_It's the same thing._

_~Is that what your mother taught you?~_

_I… She… Go away!_

_~No. I'm right here. I'm here for you.~_

* * *

There was a knock on the door. The guard started and dropped his paper. He stood looking around nervously and opened a little panel. One of the drunks inside the holding cell across from Justina snickered loudly. The guard ignored him and peered out the little window.

"Who's there?"

"Well, that's a silly question. Aren't you the Lawrence boy?"

The guard visibly relaxed, pointedly ignoring the slurred mutter of, "That's a silly question who?" And snickering from the other cell.

"Hi, Tony. Did my mom buy something heavy again? I can come get it after work but I can't really come away right now…"

"Nope. I'm here to see the woman from the stage. The one looking for Wells."

Justina sat up again suddenly, staring at the door.

"I'm sorry Tony I can't let you in. Procedure, you know?"

"Don't be silly, I don't want to come in. You bring her out here, that's what the room with the tables is for."

"I can't do that without another guard present. It's just me right now."

"What?"

"I would need a second guard here before I could do that!"

"Then call another guard."

"But-"

"Young man. I may be stuck in this town until the auction gets going again and I can get my money for the things that I brought, but I do not want to spend all day in this building. Call someone and let me talk to the girl. And when you get off your shift tell your mother I haven't found a buyer for that vase she liked yet, so if I still have it when we next see each other, I'll accept her lower bid."

The guard blinked at the sudden turn mid-speech. "She wants another vase?"

"Yep."

He shook his head. "Okay I'll let her know. Look, could you come back in about 20 minutes? That's when my co-worker gets back from lunch, and I really do need another guard here before I leave the room. I can't lose this job."

"Alright, however. See you, son."

"No wait!" Justina scrambled off her cot and up to the bars, her calm facade shattered. "Don't go I-"

"He's gone." The guard interrupted, not unkindly. "But he'll be back. Tony likes to poke at things that make him curious. And once he's decided something, changing his mind is really hard."

* * *

_Why did she do it? Why did she leave me?_

_~She didn't mean too. She loved you, in all your memories I've seen how much she loved you. She loved you, and she made a mistake, but she never wanted to leave you alone.~_

_How would you know?_

_~Because I'm a grown up. And I'm not the one in the middle of this situation.~_

_It isn't fair, she didn't get a hero's ending, she didn't die killing a villain or in order to save people. She didn't get any last words. No one was there to see her final breath. It isn't fair._

_~Maybe. But she died creating, not destroying. And that's how I would rather go.~_

_What do you know about being a hero?_

_~Nothing at all.~_

* * *

The guard cuffed Justina firmly to what looked like little more than a card table bolted to the floor and sat her in a folding chair. A man was seated across from her, leaning back comfortably in an identical chair. His uneven grey hair jutted out from under a battered broad brimmed hat. He was weather beaten and wiry. His eyes had a shrewd gleam and his face seamed creased in a permanent expression of amused skepticism.

Before she finished sitting down Justina asked. "You said you'd heard of my husband?"

"Heard of him, ha! I had the man ride around in my head for a little while. Turned my whole ship around and delayed my trading route. I don't know how he and his friends got out before the dome went down. All the other supers were stuck in there."

"He's a pilot not a super."

"Don't be silly. Possession is obviously a super power. Not a bad man though, he took me back where I'd been going before he skedaddled. Talked to me a bit once his friends were off in Sentinel City. Wouldn't have minded being one of the first to trade there but he meant well. Heh, Wells meant well."

The man laughed a little at his own joke. Justina smiled uncertainly.

"Oh, but pardon my rudeness. I'm Tony, what's your name?"

"Ah, Justina. Um… Justina Wells."

"Justina. That's a silly name."

Justina bristled, "It's a family name and it's mine."

"Alright, no need to get testy. Your husband was the same way when I called him Tom, you know."

"I can imagine."

"Man talked like an encyclopedia. Yep, he had a thousand ways to tell me to not do that."

"He talked like what?"

"Sore about losing his body too, although he didn't want to admit it."

"Losing his-?"

"Got it all mixed up with his pride in having something called 'Google' in his head."

"Wait, can you go back to what happened to him?"

"What?"

"What did you mean about losing his body?"

"Oh dear. You've been looking for a long time then haven't you. I'm sorry to tell you your husband is dead. Got a real chip on his shoulder over it too."

"But he can't be dead. You met him."

"Yep, met him. Had him pull my puppet strings. Got him to tell me lots of interesting statistics and tricks to make my ship work better. Man sounded like a robot, but his advice was sound."

"I mean, he could be a little distant, but I wouldn't call him a robot."

"Eh? Said he needed to 'reboot.' Talked about his 'operating system,' his 'data banks.' The man talked like a robot. Ha! Thought he knew everything about everything. Had some real silly ideas too."

"I…" Justina shook her head, "Please. I need to find him."

"Hoping to apologize?"

Justina flushed, wondering just how much he knew. "I need to make sure he's safe. I need to make sure I didn't push him into a dangerous situation."

"Don't be silly. Of course you did. But he'll be fine. Supers always are."

"Excuse me?"

"He thinks he's dead, but he doesn't blame you for that. Can't say he thought about you much at all when he was in my head. We had other things to deal with."

Justina told herself that it didn't hurt to hear that. "What did he do?"

"What?"

"Where did you guys go? What happened?"

"Oh, we went to the dome from Elysium, and then back. Had a devil of a time dodging this pirate ship bent on revenge. Why are you chasing after him? Didn't you leave? Seems silly to do an about turn after so long."

"He's my husband. I love him. And I'm not going to leave him in danger. He wouldn't be in this situation if I hadn't tried to push him out of his comfort zone."

"That seems a silly way to describe asking for a divorce."

"A separation, not a divorce. And I don't need to justify myself to you. I just wanted him to stop ignoring me, I never wanted to put him in danger."

"Ha! He blames Krieger more than he blames you. If you feel the need to blame yourself though then I guess you'd say his so-called death is on you, then."

"I don't think I like you very much."

Tony shrugged, unconcerned. "Never said _I_ blamed you. Nope. That would be silly. Man made his own decisions. Got caught in someone else's crossfire. It happens."

"Where is he? Please, I have to find him."

"Don't know. He popped up in my head for a little while then evaporated into the ether. All said and done a couple years back. He probably went to Sentinel City, that's where all the heroes live."

"A couple years?" Justina felt like the bottom was falling out of her stomach.

Tony peered at her. "Yup. That's how time goes, you know."

Justina didn't answer.

"Unless you've been stuck in someone's time bubble or something. How long has it been for you?"

She ignored him. "I'm too late. I'm too late, again. I finally found a lead and I'm late by a couple god damn years!"

She tried to stand, but the chains pulled her up short, wrenching her wrists. She sat hard and hid her face in her hands. "I'm too late."

"Hey, now. Don't cry." Tony sounded alarmed.

"Not crying. Just done."

"Giving up?"

"No. I just need a… No, I can't give up. Is there anything else you can tell me?" Justina looked up again, clinging to the life line of her stubborn pride.

Tony looked at her shrewdly. "Is this really about love? Or is it about guilt."

She glared at him. "Is there anything else you can tell me about where he might have gone or not?"

Tony shrugged. "It felt like he was falling and scattering into motes of light. He seemed unconcerned." Tony got to his feet a little stiffly.

"Thank you." Justina bit out. "I wish your answers were different but still, thank you for telling me."

"Well, thank you for making my day a little less boring. That was brave what you did on that stage, stupid and brave. Good luck, young lady."

* * *

_I'm going to be a hero. A real hero. I'll make the world better._

_~I never doubted that.~_

_I'm going to make her proud._

_~You already have.~_

_I miss her. I'll always miss her._

And for the first time since that awful moment on stage Patience moved under her own volition. She curled up on the cot Max had set her on, in a cell that would never hold her if she decided to leave. She cried herself to sleep.

* * *

Back in her cell Justina brooded. _Too late. Too god damned late. I failed. Again! And it's been _years _for him! How is that even possible? _She finally remembered Skipper talking about time running differently in different metaverses. She buried her head in her arms and swore quietly. The guard ignored her. The drunks had fallen asleep and snored loudly. _I hate this place._

Eventually the sun did set and Justina managed to fall asleep. She didn't dream about the girl with the rabbit's ears. She dreamed of Thomas, looking as lost as she felt, and neither of them said a word.

* * *

Patience woke feeling sore and gutted. It was dark. She tried to cling to the shredding comfort of sleep.

_Are you still there?_

_~I'll be here as long as you need me to be.~_

_You'll have to go back to Skipper with Justina soon._

_~She'll understand. I'm staying with you.~_

_Thank you_. Patience felt the smallest corner of her heart ease, then she had a sudden thought. _Wait, where is Justina?_

_~Probably in another cell very like this one. We were found at a crime scene you know.~_

_Uh-oh. What do we do?_

_~It's fine, we'll be fine. We can just wait for now. Justina can take care of herself. It's okay.~_

_I can't just leave her there! It's my fault she came at all. A hero doesn't leave people behind._

Xanaria could feel Patience's resolve and didn't argue. The girl had found something to hold on to when her soul was in chaos and Xanaria was not going to take that away from her.

_I can get us out._ Patience flexed her hands preparing to bend the bars.

_~I don't think they locked the doors. Max put you in here because he was told you needed to be detained, but he has to know this place would never hold you if you wanted out.~_

_Are you sure?_

_~Try the door.~_

Patience put a hand against the flat panel with the key hole in it and pushed gently. The door swung open. She was the only one in any of the four cells and there was no guard in the room. She crossed quickly to the main door. This one was also unlocked.

Out of the room was a hallway. Right across from her was a door identical to the one she had just come out of. At the end of the hall to the right was a barred window showing only Blackness. At the other end was an open door. There was a light on in the room beyond and shadows moved so she guessed there were people inside. She hesitated, unsure what to do.

_~We can go out the window.~ _Xanaria tried not to sigh._ ~I'm getting used to it. You don't need to talk to anyone.~_

_No_. Patience decided. _They might know where Justina is._

As she approached she heard quiet voices and the sound of someone's muffled crying. When she stepped through the door she froze.

Max was there. The Albatross. Mr. Mist. The West Wind. Verisimilitude. Wilma Willson, who refused to use a hero name. Every past or current member of her mother's team who could possibly get here. Even Mirror's Echo was in the looking glass set on the table for her.

Everyone was sitting around a long table and they had left the overhead lights off. Instead, the room was lit by a handful of beeswax candles set near the middle of the table. Each had burned down slightly different amounts. The Honeycomb had made them and she kept a pile of fresh ones in a basket by her feet.

Patience had seen this before when the team had lost a member. She had been seven and they had done it at the counter in her mother's house. They would light a candle as they told a story about the deceased member. They had been at it long after her mother had put her to bed and in the morning the counter had been covered with burned down stumps of beeswax. She had left them there for over a month.

The group went silent when she walked in, Max choking mid story.

"Patience." He whispered. "I'm so sorry."

She stared at him, fury rising in her chest.

"We set a place for you." The West Wind whispered. "If you would like to join us." They gestured gently, a puff of air making the candles flicker softly.

Patience stared at each of them, getting more and more angry. She had tried to contact many of the people in this room. Those she had been able to reach hadn't believed her. Verisimilitude had told her she had a wonderful imagination. Wilma had told her she didn't have time for pranks. Patience felt her tendons creak as she clenched her fists.

Her eyes focused on Max. Max who had laughed at her, dismissed her, and carried her bodily from the room where her mother had been. Her vision tunneled in on him and the edges went to red. She took a step toward him. She began to raise her hands. But then something made her pause.

Xanaria didn't say anything, but Xanaria wasn't feeling rage. Xanaria felt pity for a man who had lost his mentor and failed her daughter on the same day. Xanaria was looking at the tears sticking his eyelashes into spikes. Xanaria was thinking about how hard it must be for these people to have lost someone they cared about so much to something they had never imagined was a threat. And Xanaria was thinking they must be feeling pretty ashamed of themselves right now.

Patience shook her head, crossed her arms, and took a deep breath. "Where is she?" She asked bluntly, still angry but a little less murderous.

"They took her to the morgue, until they could rule out foul play."

Patience felt her heart stutter for a moment before she realized they were talking about her mother's statue.

"No. Where's Justina?" She saw them exchange confused looks. "Where is the woman who helped me when all of you were too busy to answer your damn phones?" She kept her voice low and felt a vicious sort of pleasure as they winced.

"She's down stairs." Max choked out, then buried his face in his arms.

"You know," The West Wind breathed. "It would be horribly illegal if someone were to help her escape. It's a good thing you slept in that cell all night and only came out in the morning." They took a steady drink from their cup, colorless eyes not looking anywhere in particular.

Patience nodded shortly. She hadn't thought to go to The West Wind. They were oddly forgettable, despite the raw power that ran through their slight frame.

For a moment Patience considered stopping to share a story and light a candle for her mother, to make peace. But this was their ritual not hers, and she didn't think she would make it through the night without laying into someone if she didn't leave soon. So she just nodded to The West Wind, swept a last look around the rest of the room, and left.

_~I think you handled that really well,~ _Xanaria felt like comfort and strength to Patience's raw nerves. ~_There aren't many adults who could have had half your restraint.~_

_Thank you. _Patience thought quietly, hoping Xanaria would know it was for more than her kind words.

* * *

Justina woke suddenly to the sound of the hallway door door being ripped free of it's deadbolt. She blinked, disoriented, and flinched as a small form made a beeline for her cell. She rubbed her eyes and the blurry dark and glowing gold figure came into focus in the low light.

"The Buckler's here?" She mumbled.

"Sure am." Patience didn't pause before yanking the door open. There was a sound of screaming metal and the lock plate was left behind as the rest of the door tore free.

Justina wobbled to her feet. "Where's the guard?"

"He went to pee and I locked him in the bathroom. Come on we don't have much time."

Patience pulled her along, ignoring the drunk mumble of, "Hey, sweetheart, let me out too."

Justina shook off her grogginess and gently extracted her hand from Patience's grip. She was clearly trying to be gentle, but Justina knew her wrist would have bruises soon.

"Where are we going?" Justina asked as they hurried out onto the dark and silent street.

"You need to go back to Skipper. I'm sorry, I know you want to look for your husband but you can't do that from a jail cell and even though you did nothing wrong there are some very rich people mixed up in all of this and I don't think they were going to let you out any time soon."

"No, that's fine. I had a visitor. I've learned all I think I can from this world." She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, Patience had much bigger problems right now.

As they ducked into a park Patience slowed down to a regular walk, still keeping a wary eye behind them. "What did you learn?"

Justina shrugged and tried to seem okay. "I'm too late. By a couple of years. He isn't here anymore."

"But that's something right? More than you had before?"

"Yeah," Justina did her best to smile and changed the subject, "How are you holding up?"

Patience shrugged, and Justina felt a pang as she noted that the motion was almost identical to her own. "I don't _think_ I'll turn evil and go on a murderous rampage."

Justina's eyebrows went up. "Is there anything I can do?"

Patience smiled, a little painfully. "You've done a lot for me. What you can do now is disappear so no one can take their frustration out on you."

"And leave you to deal with it?"

"In their eyes, I'm a child, and a super, and…" her voice broke but she cleared her throat and continued, "and… her… daughter. I am protected in ways you are not."

"But Xanaria, you'll stay with her, right?"

"Yes. I'll stay with her as long as she needs me too."

"Good."

They came out the other side of the park and Patience hesitated. "Um, where exactly did you come out?"

Justina looked around. "I don't know the street name. It wasn't far from the market, and the houses looked like patchwork. I know that doesn't narrow it down much. Lets see, there was a woman with a taser… Oh! And I came out on a patch of grass with this ancient arched door thing on it."

"Ah! The Timeless Door! That actually makes sense."

"The what?"

"The Timeless Door. It's in a lot of local folk tales. Weird things happen around that arch."

"So you know how to get there, then?"

"Blind folded."

Patience led the way.

It took them a little longer to get there than it needed to, Patience was careful to avoid bigger roads that might still have people on them this late. When they did see someone Xanaria had to keep her from diving suspiciously into a bush. They kept their heads down and walked normally and no one looked twice at them. Eventually they reached the arch on it's patch of grass with one street light flickering nearby.

"Now what?" Patience asked.

"I'm not entirely sure. Now Skipper has to notice we're here and open the door. Sometimes it's visible, sometimes it isn't. I guess we say goodbye and then I walk back and forth through the arch looking like an idiot until I disappear?"

Patience snorted. "Well, good bye then."

Justina smiled and impulsively hugged the girl. Surprised, Patience hugged her back.

"Goodbye. You'll do great things in this world, I know it. Take care of each other please. And Xanaria? Stay as long as you need to."

Patience and Xanaria didn't say anything, just gave her one more squeeze. With a wave Justina stepped toward the arch and, with a familiar bump and falling sensation, right back into Skipper's domain.


	14. In Which Paths Diverge, Rejoin, and Are

**In Which Paths Diverge, Rejoin, and Are Left**

* * *

"That was fast!" Skipper said looking surprised when Justina stepped out of the door. "I didn't have a chance to close it yet! Is something wrong?"

Justina shook her head. "Many things are wrong. It's been a busy couple of days. Xanaria will be staying behind for a while. Maybe a long while. I need a drink."

"I'm sorry." Skipper said flipping upside down and closing the door. "There is no more alcohol here. You didn't bring any and my last friends drank the last of theirs when they were saying goodbye. And I don't want to leave Xanaria still in this world. It would probably be fine but I don't want to risk testing the Metastone's range."

They looked so apologetic Justina smiled and shook her head. "It's okay. I'll substitute a bath and a nap for now." And she walked away keeping an eye on the colorful scarf markers overhead.

* * *

Xanaria stayed with Patience through the investigation and the trial. She stayed with Patience through the turmoil when her mother's death was ruled an accident in which no one was held accountable. She stayed with Patience as the West Wind took her under their wing. She stayed with Patience through the funeral. She stayed with Patience as the town's folk, very politely, asked if they could turn her childhood home into a museum for her mother. Patience let them. It hurt too much sleeping in that house every night. She moved in with the West Wind.

Xanaria stayed as Patience began to go on missions, just a few at first, then more and more. They were mostly relief work and infrastructure repair. And Xanaria was relieved to notice that the West Wind kept a careful eye on Patience when they were in seedier locations. Xanaria stayed with Patience for 7 months, 2 weeks, and 3 days.

One night, after they were in bed and the lights were all out, Patience thought, _Xanaria?_

_~Yes?~_

_I think it's time._

Xanaria was sleepy, they had spent all day holding metal beams in place while the Welder did his thing. _~Time for what?~_

_I think I'm ready for you to go._

That woke her up. _~Are you sure?~_

_Yes_. Patience said, but her thoughts felt lonely. _I'll miss you terribly, but you can't stay forever and I'll be okay now._

_~You know I love you, right kid?~_

_Yeah. I love you too. You'll come visit again, won't you?_

_~I'll do my absolute best.~_

And, without any conscious thought, something let go. Patience cried quietly into her pillow until she fell asleep, but woke knowing she'd done the right thing and ready for another day of her new life.

* * *

Xanaria found herself gripping the Metastone with stiff fingers. She let go of it and stretched, reveling in the feeling of being in her own skin again. Her ears twitched, and she stood, dusting off her dress. She sobered a moment thinking of Patience and resolved firmly to visit her again someday. Somehow.

"Hi!"

Xanaria looked up and grinned widely, "Skipper!"

She plucked them from their vine and gave them a big hug and a rub between the ears. Skipper purred and nuzzled her cheek.

"Oh, I've missed you Skipper. Oh! Where's Justina? Is she still here? I need to go say hi!"

"She's in her room, she just went to bed but I don't think she's asleep yet. Can you put me down before you go running off to her? The jostling gets my tails all twisted."

Xanaria laughed and set Skipper down before tearing off through the bushes.

* * *

Justina wasn't asleep. She wished she was because she felt like a failure, lonely, and miserable. Unfortunately it seemed she had gotten enough sleep in the jail cell a couple hours ago, because sleep would not come. She had her eyes closed when she heard someone shouting her name in the distance. Confused, she got up, and left her clearing heading toward the sound to see what was going on. She hadn't gotten far when Xanaria burst out of the bushes and leapt on her giving her a big hug.

Justina hugged her back, bewildered and a bit concerned. "Are you okay?"

"I missed you!"

"I thought you were going to stay with Patience. Is something wrong?"

Xanaria held her at arm's length and cocked her head to one side. "I did. I stayed with her for months."

"Months? Skipper!"

"Yes?" They asked, popping out of a bush.

"How long was my bath?"

"I don't know. Maybe 45 minutes?"

"But I've been gone for months." Xanaria looked back and forth between the two of them.

"Sorry." Skipper shrugged cheerfully, "Time moves differently in different places."

"So, I guess you didn't have time to miss me and I seem to be acting very silly right now."

"Of course I missed you!" Justina pulled her back into a hug. "It's just that I've only had to miss you for an hour or so. Maybe it's selfish, but I'm glad it wasn't longer. Tell me all about what happened after I left!"

Xanaria told the story. They all sat down on the soft moss and Skipper, it turned out, was a fantastically attentive and responsive audience. Especially considering that when the story was all told they had to ask, "Wow! And who is Patience? What happened when you were both there?"

Xanaria laughed and this time they told the story together. It was going great until Justina got to the part where Tony had visited her. She quickly dropped out of storyteller mode, gave the bare facts, and let Xanaria tell the rest.

Justina put her head in her hands. "I need a drink."

"I wouldn't mind one either." Xanaria put a hand on her back.

"I still don't have any alcohol here. But maybe I could take you to another metaverse? You could come back with more stories?! You guys tell good stories."

Xanaria smiled. "That sounds like a lovely idea! Are you sure it's not too soon?"

Skipper grinned, "I can do it! Where do you want to go?"

Justina looked up. "Just take me somewhere different. Somewhere with alcohol."

"I don't think I've ever heard of a metaverse without alcohol."

"Great. Then I would very much like to go somewhere unfamiliar."

"Do you want me to find one that has traces of Thomas? I think I've gotten good at following him now."

"No. It doesn't matter, I'm years too late. Could you just take me somewhere new, please?"

Skipper saluted with a tail, "I will do my best!"


End file.
